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What is the point of a lecture when you have a textbook?
I never really understood the point of having a course with lectures when the course has a textbook. Sometimes the subject is so high-level or specialized or so modern that the contents are changing rapidly that there is no textbook (for example at the graduate level). But more often the textbook includes everything that will be said in the lecture, and much more: extra content, exercises, answers to exercises, appendices, etc.
I assume a STEM context, that is we can assume the textbook is available in the sense that there is one comprehensive source that contains undisputed facts, as opposed to a broad literature with lots of interpretations and opinions (as may be the case in non-STEM contexts).
So what is the point of a lecture?

For some people in some classes, the lecture is pointless. But there are people who do better in class, or people who are not disciplined enough to read the book themselves; and there are classes where a great deal of value is added over the book.

The textbook and the lectures should compliment each other.  One should not be a replacement or substitute for the other.

A lecture gives you a formal setting.  Otherwise, why go to school?  You might as well self-learn, take an exam when you're ready and collect your degree.  Also, a great lecturer/teacher will not 'read' from textbook and tell you the fundamentals that govern everything.  Also he/she may teach you how to 'think' about a subject/topic.  Lastly, there has been research that says you absorb more when someone tells you the info versus you reading the same info by yourself.

"Why go to school? You might as well self-learn, take an exam when you're ready and collect your degree." That is a very good question which I am not sure how to answer either...

You can ask questions in a lecture.

You can also do this at office hours.

@JoshuaBenabou Asking questions at office hours is pretty ineffective if 200 other students have the same question.

My point is you don't need a lecturer to repeat information in the textbook for you to ask a question. If the instructor thinks the question is a common one he will bring it to the attention of everyone at office hours, for example.

Have any of you heard of people teaching themselves from books and then testing out of math classes at the undergrad level?

Also, the answer to this question is very different for STEM vs. non-STEM. In STEM, esp. in math, often the lecturer basically repeats the proofs from the book verbatim. In history, for example, it is really important to have a human teaching you, because each book has its own, possibly narrow, perspective, and in any case one can't read every history book on every subject; the lecturer needs to create a course consisting of the important subset.

@ReneG: yes, this is not uncommon. Also I had in mind STEM.

What is the point of seeing a play when you have the script?

Ideally the lecture is not just a rehearsal of the book. Most university level subjects are not just "oh, i read it twice and will understand everything" kind of material, therefore an active quittance, pointing out common pitfalls, external feedback by tests etc are rather necessary.

@BenCrowell I would take that "study" with a huge grain of salt - might be worth reading an article about psychology studies in general: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/28/psychology-experiments-failing-replication-test-findings-science
Also, from personal experience (Maths) I have a huge preference for a handwritten lecture over pre-prepared slides - and yes, one subject switched, so I experience both on the same subject.

@BenCrowell: That paper doesn't show learning styles are a myth - that's a much stronger claim than it's making. They are basically saying nobody has created a successful programme using learning-styles assessments to enhance learning outcomes and proved it, i.e. there's a lack of good evidence, not even that there's evidence of lack of success.

There's a great talk about this. Which I think makes a lot of sence. Have student watch lecture at home (video of the best teachers, or read the book) and do "homework" in the classroom. I remember, the time I had to most question was when doing the actual work.

Please take extended discussion to [chat].

@Calvin'sHobbies I wouldn't say most lectures, especially at the graduate level, are really works of art.

Here is clearly the answer you want: None, there is no point.

@above: I don't appreciate that. I already had some ideas on this topic but I have come here to ask my question because I am open to other ideas. I don't want an answer with no explanation.

@Calvin'sHobbies: Thank you for sparing me the need to invoke an analogy concerning a woman and a dirty magazine.

Answers to this similar (but not identical) question might also be interesting to you: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/29805/why-have-lectures-in-the-information-age

@CreationEdge Lectures serve an important purpose.  They allow students to nap mid-day.  Sleep is medically necessary.

@the_lotus. Oh, so something's going to revolutionise education again, is it?

@TRiG isn't your video saying the exact same thing as the one I posted?

As the question is now protected I will need to answer here. The job of a good lecturer is to expand and illuminate the material presented in the course texts as well as allow the presentation of extra insights into the subject. Linked with tutorials this allows a good student to validate their understanding and seek clarification of any ambiguities . A lecturer who slavishly repeats the text book is not earning their salary and is not giving the students the education they are entitled to

Going through problems seems to be the most illuminating way to gather new insights. Wouldn't you agree that doing problem sets, especially in collaboration with others, is better for learning than attending a lecture.

In my experience, I remember a lot better the things that I hear than I do the things that I read. It will take me a lot longer to take in information when reading it, as I may need to reread several times to really appreciate it, whilst listening in a lecture I can take it in immediately. I read no books and barely read any course notes at university and still got a First Class Degree. Lectures were invaluable to me.

Just my personal experience: I have never found lectures which follow textbooks exactly to be useful. Maybe some Q&A, but that is usually stuff that I can't answer simply in class without slowing the class down, so I defer those questions either to office hours or in an e-mail. I'm having quite a different experience currently with professors who don't follow the textbook at all at a new university, and I feel that my understanding of the textbook seems to be paying off more than merely reading the textbook to find out what I'm going to hear about during a lecture.

I started writing a post about all the things I like to do that the book doesn't: offer an intuitive overview, a fresh perspective on the basics, etc.
Then I realized that of course, there's no reason that the book couldn't do these things. Most of them don't, but there's no fundamental reason not to. Everything I do in a lecture to help students see the subject from all sides could be translated to the book.
So I guess the main point of lectures is just that it's another medium. Yes you could learn from only one medium, but it goes faster if you use multiple media at the same time. Not just books and lectures: websites, games, audiobooks, documentaries, programming, role playing. Each medium has it's own slight advantages, and idiosyncracies. Even if the story is the same, the energy you have to put in, the mixture of senses you use, and the parts of your brain you activate are all different.
So what, specifically, are the benefits of the medium of a lecture? Here's what I can think of:

Obligation: You are expected to be there. It may be childish, but for a lot of students, it's difficult to work if someone isn't making them do it.
Interaction: It's not just that students are able to ask questions: lecturers can ask te audience a question too. And even if you're not the one answering, you're definitely checking in your head whether you know the answer, which means you're interacting with the material. A book can do this too, ask a reader to consider a question: but the sense of stress isn't there.
Intonation, rhythm and storytelling: A good speaker can hold the attention of an audience. If you're reading, you have to do all the work to keep the attention. The author simply has fewer tools to keep you interested.
Presence The fact that there's an actual person present in the same room as you, makes you sit up. This is a simple human convention. As most lecturers know, it's a convention that students find easy to dismiss, but the basic sense that you're in a room with another person still changes the energy.
Speaker guidance A good speaker will sense the energy of the room. This lets her change speed, take a break, or spend a bit longer on a subject if she notices the room isn't following along. This makes each lecture tailored to the audience. The smaller the audience, the more different the lecture from audience to audience.

Of course, it takes a special lecturer to understand these points and try to capitalize on them. Many don't and just follow the book.

While I have appreciated lectures for the reasons you list (rarely all of them in the same classroom, unfortunately), I feel like this answer succumbs to the false dichotomy "lecture vs self-learning" underlying the question and many answers. Ben Crowell's answer shows that there are alternatives.

@Raphael that's not at all my intention with this answer. As I said: if you want to learn something, try to get the material in as many different forms as possible. A lecture is one, and sitting down with a book is another. In fact I'd say the lectures are optional and the book isn't if you really want to learn something. I'm just trying to answer the question of what the specific value is that lectures offer over other media.

Education is a relationship and it's a lot harder to have a relationship with an author via a book than with a lecturer via being able to discuss things face-to-face. I think your answer captures that concept. +1

I like lectures because it highlights what the teacher feels important.  You can get a lot of meta-data by watching what they place emphasis on.  Plus, as always, you might learn from the other students' questions or general tangents and stuff.

@above: the lecturer could just share his lecture notes with students... often lecturers refuse to do this, which doesn't make sense to me. A classroom full of 50 students or so all copying the same thing, which is already written down somewhere, baffles me.

"The fact that there's an actual person present in the same room as you, makes you sit up." We are still talking about students right?

@Jospeh, I know, I know :) Still, I like to think that you get at least 5 or 10 minutes of courtesy attention before they open their laptop and start playing minecraft.

@Peter - Haha that's true =)

With a text book you are required to sort everything out for yourself.
By having access to an expert (the lecturer) there is the potential that you can learn more efficiently. In general the expert is knowledgeable not only about the topic at hand but at associated issues including prioritizing topics and tricky concepts that need better or further explanation. By attending a lecture you can tap into the expertise of the lecturer like your own (more or less) personal guide to the topic at hand.

@JoshuaBenabou the rationale behind not handing out lecture notes is that the professor actually wants people to turn up for the lecture and they feel there is very little insensitive for people to show up when they think they have everything they need. One of the best lecturers I know does this, and it is because most undergrads and some grad students don't have the maturity to appreciate the additional  benefit they are actually getting from the lecture. Also there are studies that show the act of taking notes reinforces the process of forming memories.

@JoshuaBenabou In addition to what AMR wrote, a good lecture is also a performance, for which the notes are more like a script. I furthermore agree that there should never be a classroom of any size copying the same thing. Each student should be making their own notes in their own words, because the mental processing necessary to do that is an essential part of learning, and arguably the entire point of both lectures and homework. Teachers handing out lecture notes are actually doing their students a huge disservice.

Well handing out the lectures for students to read is the same thing as reading a textbook, no?

Research shows that students who skip lectures do the same at their exams as those who attend. Can you provide references?  I vaguely remember studies showing the opposite (at least in math), but the question of causation vs correlation was unanswered.

@Kimball I'm afraid I was a little sloppy there. Our department director always says this. And while I'm sure she has good research to back this up, I can't find it myself. What I can find is several studies suggesting the opposite. I'm not if the question has been definitively answered yet, but what I said was definitely wrong. I removed the paragraph.

Let me give you an answer in the form of an analogy.
Say you head to a city in a foreign country where you do not know the language, have no friends, do not have a guide book, maybe just have a map, but most of the words are the local names, and you do not have an idea of what they all mean.
Now you could look at that map and resolve to follow every single street until you have walked the entire city. You could even make notes on the map of every place of interest, but that will take you a long time, and a lot of effort. A large majority of the streets that you walk down will hold no interest for you and some of them may look like they lead somewhere, but due to construction have become dead ends.
Now let's say instead that you go to the same city but you hire a local guide that is very fluent in your language, or it could even be a friend that lived there for several years. With a few questions they will likely be able to figure out your interests, what you will find fascinating and what will just waste your time. They may even know of some hidden gems that, in the prior example, you got to towards the end of a day when you were totally exhausted, and you just didn't notice them, so you missed out.
Well, even an average lecturer, especially one that is actively involved in research in that field will be that tour guide in that subject. You will be more productive, you will learn more of the relevant information, and will allow you to skip the 300 pages of filler material that the publisher made the authors include to justify the $200 price tag on a new edition to a text whose prior edition was only two years before.
A great lecturer will get you to see how all of those facts are actually linked together in a consistent and coherent whole and will start you thinking about the material as an expert would. They can provide you with insights that will refocus the material and let you see it with new eyes. They can make you think about ideas and draw conclusions that you may never come to on your own...
That and they also give hints about what they feel is important and what is going to be on the exams. Also, if you need a letter of recommendation, the authors of the book aren't going to write it for you and the clerk at the campus bookstore isn't going to carry very much credibility. So prep by skimming before lecture, read in detail after lecture, but most importantly, get yourself into a seat in that lecture hall and maybe make the additional effort of heading to their office hours as well.

Yes, exactly this. The main purpose in my mind is that the professor can provide guidance on what is important and what isn't. Even the worst professors aren't going to stand at the lectern and read every word of every chapter - they will need to cut out the extras and the tangents to only provide the key points of each lesson.

You don't know what worst professors do, do you? :)

Let me put it to you this way @Ketan; even the worst professors have more experience that you do if you are not a peer or a colleague. If you are a student of life, then there is always something you can learn from someone else, even if it is how not to do something.

@AMR I understand. My comment was just a spontaneous blurb.

The other answers address important aspects of this meaningful, elephant-in-the-room question. But, yes, the ideal, that you can ask questions, that something more than the mere text is conveyed, is not reliably met. Yes, very-good lecturers "add value", but this is not so common, in my field, mathematics. Sure, there's the human element, the reiteration, but if a student/learner has the modicum of self-discipline to read (several) books, there's scant reason to go and sit in a hard chair in a too-cold or too-warm room at randomly-chosen moments. I think only exceptionally gifted experts, or exceptionally gifted teachers, make going to class worth-while for a highly-motivated learner.
The "problem" is that most students cannot accurately identify their own state, their learning "tendencies", and so on. So their appraisal of "lectures", or, probably any classes at all, are not reliable, even for their own best interest.
E.g., even the "just read the book", as objectifiable as it might seem, depends on "the book" being up-front about underlying assumptions, for example. Yet there is a nearly-universal conceit in math texts that there is no context, nothing implicit, ... everything is absolute. And some of the absolutes are not acknowledged, either.
So, yes, self-learning by reading can be made difficult by the secret obstacles... but/and in-class learning can be made difficult by the very same things, merely said out loud and in a ponderous voice by unhelpful instructors.
So, yes, often, one can learn more from browsing around libraries/internets than from going to class. But it requires more effort, in fact. So, yes, many "classes" are not of value, maybe even negative net value if they interrupt more productive thinking, or, ... sleep.
Depends, yes.

Is this just a verbose way of saying, "lectures help some people"?

It's possible that most of my lecturers were "exceptionally gifted experts" (some of them were senior professors and my university is well-regarded), but personally during my mathematics degree I found that seeing people actually work through the material at a semi-plausible pace was a great help compared with static and highly-prepared text. In a textbook you don't see someone at the top of their field go "oh!" and look back through their work to find and correct a mistake! Of course there are other ways than lectures to experience this and it's not impossible to learn mathematics without it.

I wonder if I went to an excellent university for mathematics and never knew it until now, since all of my math lecturers added a lot of value. Certainly attempting to work through Baby Rudin without the lectures seems like a route to madness.

It's been my experience during my education in engineering, both undergraduate and graduate, that the development of ideas often takes huge leaps that a person not already familiar with the material will find impossible to follow. Most of the lectures in my classes detailed those developments in ways that were easier to understand (I say most because some profs were horrible lecturers). Or the professor would demonstrate 3 or 4 different paths to the same answer vs. the 1 in the book.

On the other hand, one of my best classes was Heat Exchanger Design, a graduate level class that dealt with fun stuff like mixed phase flows. I was the only student and the prof just told me what book to get, gave me the homework assignments and said, "Come see me if you have any questions or when you're done so you can start the projects." The projects were the same way and the exams were all of the open book, take home variety. I talked to him maybe once a week for the whole term.

Questions of this nature keep occurring through the history of education. You have suggested that with books we do not need classes; yet we have had books for the masses for quite some considerable time and we still have schools, we still have universities and we still have classes.
One Hundred years ago the role of Books themselves were controversial and some felt that they would be replaced by the movies, and then television and then the internet, and then ....
Yet people still go to class and we still teach.
Its because being an autodidact is rare. However if one is lucky enough to be an autodidact then one can manage without the lecture, without the class, without the university. But then you'd be one of the few.
But what if we could teach you something? How would you ever find out if you only use the book, the movie, the internet, the phone, .....
To quote one of my students: "You really know something don't you? You know? You really, really know stuff..." Up until that point there was a belief that we just read it out of a book.
Some of us do "Really, Really know stuff..." and some come and find out what it is.

It seems to me that anyone with above average intelligence who is very motivated to study the subject in question can absorb the information in a book in the same way they can listen to the information in their ears.

@JoshuaBenabou What proportion of students do you think are 'very motivated'?

A small proprotion, but most likely if one is not very motivated one will fail in the long run anyway.

@JoshuaBenabou I wish I could upvote that comment more. If somebody just goes to school/university because they're made to, then it's rare they would do anything worthy of note. Chimpanzees would be as easy to train, probably cheaper too.

Depends on what you mean by fail. Plenty of people benefit from a degree that they were not very motivated to study for.

This whole discussion is about STEM. I had in mind specifically science/math for people intending to do research.

@JoshuaBenabou  You know, I've had some incredibly talented students in my classes.  Some of them I managed to get to come to my office hours.  They learned by far much more than they would have from just reading a book.  So sure, if it's a huge class and it's targetting students below you, I get that.  But if it's a small class where you can engage the instructor, or even better you talk to the instructor 1 on 1, you'll learn dramatically more.

@JoshuaBenabou  And someone intending to do research isn't going to learn that from a book.  If you want to do research - the best thing to do would be to get to the prof's office and talk about what you're doing in the class and how/if that relates to the prof's research.  Remember if you're going to do a PhD one day, you'll want a letter of recommendation.  A letter of recommendation looks much better if it shows signs that the prof knows who you are.

Repetition increases retention.  Information encountered in both a textbook and a lecture will be remembered better than information encountered in only one.  Neither textbooks nor lecture are optimal learning tools.

Repetition increases retention. So then is reading the book twice just as good as reading the book and attending a lecture?

Getting the same info from two different sources is more effective even when wording is the same: Multiple source effect.

@CreationEdge there are many published experiments addressing review.

One aspect that doesn't seem to have been mentioned so far (pointed out to me by a colleague earlier this week): the goal of a textbook and the goal of a course are different.  A textbook is typically written to be used in many settings for one or more courses, and is meant to fit a broader curriculum than whatever specific course you are taking.  For instance, when I lecture, say in a calculus class, I don't typically present all material or examples in every section we cover.  So the lecture ends up being a more focused presentation than what is in the text.
Also, I often present things differently than the text, including some things not in the text.  I think these things are mentioned in other answers, but let me emphasize the usefulness of seeing different presentations of material when learning a subject, which I think is different than pure repetition.  It's pretty common when you reach a higher level of mathematics to learn a topic by reading several different books in tandem--seeing different perspectives helps you get a more complete picture and balances out deficiencies in specific presentations.

Some good answers here, but I don't think I've ever heard or read a better explanation than that of T.W. Korner's (full text available here).  It's specifically about math lectures but still largely relevant for STEM.
Rather than attempt to summarize and do injustice to the full text, here are some choice quotes, starting with the bold claim:

"Many mathematicians find it easier to learn from lectures than from
  books."

On the advantages a good lecturer brings:

"If the mathematics is hard, the lecturer...[is] compelled to go
  slowly, but they can speed past the easy parts.  In a book, the
  mathematics, whether hard or easy, slips by at the same steady pace."
"Most lecturers can sense when an audience is puzzled and respond by
  giving a new explanation or illustration."
"The lecturer is forced by the lecture format to concentrate on the
  essentials."

On learning by watching:

"A lecture presents the mathematics as a growing thing and not as a
  timeless snapshot.  we learn more by watching a house being built than
  by inspecting it afterwards."
"we learn by watching experts [...] and imitating them.  Unguided
  practice is generally useless and often worse than useless.  People
  who teach themselves to program acquire a mass of bad programming
  habits... Mathematics textbooks show us how mathematicians write
  mathematics, but lectures show us how mathematicians do mathematics."

This remind me of what Rota said of Church: It may be asked why anyone would bother to sit in a lecture which was the literal repetition of an available text. Such a question would betray an oversimplified view of what goes on in a classroom. What one really learns in class is what one does not know at the time one is learning. The person lecturing to us was logic incarnate. His pauses, hesitations, emphases, his betrayals of emotion (however rare) and sundry other nonverbal phenomena taught us a lot more logic than any written text could.

(cont'd) We learned to think in unison with him as he spoke, as if following the demonstration of a calisthenics instructor. Church's course permanently improved the rigor of our reasoning.

tl;dr: Good lectures are better than bad textbooks.

@JeffE I don't agree with that "TL;DR".  Korner's overall point is that even an excellent textbook will be written to convey information and involve the reader in a different way than a good lecture.

@Chan-HoSuh But almost all of the specific criticisms compare good lectures to bad textbooks.  Good textbooks help the reader speed past the easy parts. Good textbook authors are forced to concentrate on the essentials. Good textbooks present mathematics as a growing thing and not a timeless snapshot.  Good textbooks show how mathematicians do mathematics.  The only thing a good textbook can't do—at least, not yet—is realize when the reader is confused and adapt.

@JeffE that's your opinion of what a good textbook is.  J.P. Serre's textbooks are considered amongst the most exemplary examples of mathematical writing, but certainly they tend to present the material as "timeless".  His style is to present the material as cogently and concisely as possible, i.e. a cleaned-up version, not how it was really done.  Many mathematicians would say that is an important part of mathematics. Also, many good mathematical textbooks give fairly complete proofs.  This will require at times going through details that are not essential to the ideas of the proof.

Serre's textbooks are considered amongst the most exemplary examples of mathematical writing — I respectfully but forcefully disagree.  Serre's books—and I've read several—are horrible textbooks, in my opinion.

@JeffE I never said I agreed with that either, but it's undeniably true a great many mathematicians think they are exemplary.  Anyway, whether you disagree with Korner or me is beside the point.  You presented your comment as a summary of my answer (which is summarizing Korner).  It was a bad summary, contrary to the entire spirit of the answer.

I don't see a contradiction in the views of Serre's books here.  Exemplary mathematical writing is not the same as exemplary mathematical textbook writing.

@Chan-HoSuh Hmm "Unguided practice is generally useless and often worse than useless" is very worrying. Could you please elaborate on how this relates to mathematics? I usually have trouble following lectures and study on my own; I want to make sure this is not a mistake.

@Ovi Unguided practice can be dangerous if you learn bad habits. That's not to say it's a mistake to study on your own, just be aware you may be doing things that are counter-productive in the long-run.  If you have trouble following lectures, there are probably things about the material you aren't really getting.  Digesting other people's explanations helps grasp concepts more fully, and so does explaining to other people.  Ideally a good student-teacher relationship provides that.

In my experience, lectures are almost always worthless. You learn more in 30 minutes of reading than in 4 hours of lectures. Still, some people  prefer lectures, and their preferences seem to be empirically justified.
In a similar way, I find it almost impossible to have a productive face-to-face discussion. Offline discussions work so much better, because you can always think about the issue for a few hours before replying. Again, other people seem to be more productive in face-to-face discussions than in offline discussions.
These two issues are probably related. Maybe some people are better at processing real-time information, while others process information in a more asynchronous fashion.

So I am to conclude that, indeed, except in a few cases like those I mentioned, there really is no point...

@JoshuaBenabou: You need to work out whether lectures are your thing. If you can get by without them, then try. One thing is that you may not know exactly what material from the book you need to learn, especially if the lectures and textbook diverge.

If you believe that you can learn quantum physics without a lecture then good luck.

Funnily enough I have worked through most of the Feynam Lectures: Volume 3 this summer. It is an introductory text, but it doesn't seem any harder to learn than, say, multivariable calculus...

That is not say that I know quantum mechanics. I'm just pointing out that in principle a good textbook could replace a lecture to learn a topic. To master a topic you probably need the help of a teacher.

I have seen the effectiveness of lectures through teaching ground (in class) courses and online courses.
My ground courses use lectures and a textbook as a teaching method whereas my online courses only use the textbook (I'll post helpful notes such as "On chapter 3 disregard pages 50-52" but other than that and answering emails there's nothing but the textbook - I use Blackboard in case that matters at all)
What I've noticed by teaching the same course through online and ground is that students almost always retain more information during the ground courses where there are both lectures and the textbook. Not only can students read the course material but they can also hear it and visualize it in some cases.
A textbook can also sometimes be difficult to follow for some students. For example:
When I was taking an accounting course during my undergrad I took it online - HUGE mistake. I ended up having to drop the course after 2 weeks because I didn't understand anything that was in the book. The next semester I took the same course as a ground course that used the same textbook and lectures. I passed the class with the top score among my classmates and I'll never forget what my professor said on the first day of class
"Don't read the textbook first. If you read the textbook first you'll be confused and filling up my inbox. Attend lectures and then read the textbook to reenforce what you learned."
Some students can follow a textbook and do well is almost any course. Others can just listen to someone talk, take notes, and do well in the course. There are also those who need both resources to retain the information. Using both methods (lectures and textbooks) will cater to all 3 of those student segments.

My lectures are designed to compliment the book, not mirror the book. Similarly, the book is a supplement to my lectures, not a summary of my lectures.
When a professor does little more than rehash the content of the assigned readings, then, for all practical purposes, students can either read the book, or attend the lecture. There may be some benefit to doing both, but doing one alone might well suffice.
That said, the authors of a book don't have my experiences; they can't tell my "war stories." They don't know where students had trouble understanding concepts last year. I can also offer a critical analysis of the text, perhaps even disagreeing with something in the book while presenting opposing views. I can also relate course material to current events, where publishers lag a year or more behind.
In short, there are several ways instructors can use class time to expound upon the foundation laid by the assigned readings.

Usually in science it's not all about being locked up in an office and learning and to acquire as much knowledge as possible, but also about meeting and discussing.
Let us assume we have a textbook that relates perfectly to the student's personality, his background, his prior knowledge, and is perfectly aligned with the course's aims.
Let us further assume that the textbook is accurate, up-to-date, stimulates reflection of the material, and relates the lessons learned to the student's past and future (professional) life.
Let us assume we have a lecture that achieves the same.
A good lecture will add to what a good textbook provides:

a platform for interaction with an expert in the field,
a platform for social/peer interaction,
a platform for networking,
a platform for scientic discourse on a small scale.

Not considering the likelihood of establishing either a textbook or a lecture that actually meets above assumptions, I think the "social" aspects of a lecture outweigh the theoretical throughput of information one can feed into a student's head.
Yes, I think colloquia and seminars do even better serve this purpose than a lecture.
Yes, I admit, the number of lectures not worth attending is probably larger than the number of textbooks not worth working through. But this strongly depends on the place you study at. If you're not satisfied at your current place you might try for a change.

I've routinely found that the big advantage of having a teacher over reading a book is that a teacher can answer questions. I often have the experience when trying to learn something from a book that some question comes to my mind, and I search through the book and spend considerable time trying to find the answer. Sometimes I never find the answer. But a human teacher who knows the subject can answer immediately. Or, if I don't understand something, with a human teacher I can ask and the teacher can attempt to explain the idea a different way, and can adapt his explanation to the specific difficulties that I express. With a book, the writer may try to explain the same idea in multiple ways. But usually not. And even if he does, he can't adapt those explanations to every reader, he can only give maybe two or three variations. When I was in college, I had many times that I engaged a teacher in a back-and-forth conversation until I was sure I understood the concept.
If by "lecture" you mean the lecturer enters the room, gives his speech, and leaves, without allowing for any questions, then okay, what I just said doesn't apply. Others have made some relevant points, like some people may learn better by hearing than by reading, that a student's personality may be such that he will listen to a speaker but is unable to concentrate on a book, a student may show up for a lecture who wouldn't bother to read the book, etc. I won't repeat what others have said any further, I think they've made the relevant points. But really, if you have a human lecturer, they are almost always willing to answer questions.
I've seen some advertisements for video lecture series that say things like "now you don't have to try to learn from a book, you can have the advantage of learning from the best teachers in the world". My usual reaction is: No. For me, watching a video of a lecture is usually inferior to reading a book. The advantage of the human teacher is that I can ask questions, but of course a video teacher cannot answer. There are cases, of course, where a video is superior to a printed book: a video can show action that a book can only describe or perhaps show still photos. So if you want to learn how to perform some physical action, like how to play golf or replace a transmission filter or whatever, a video might be able to show you in ways that a book could not. That could also be true of a human teacher: he could demonstrate steps in a process in ways that a book could not.

It depends on the lecture. If it is simply just a summary of the textbook, then it may not be very helpful. But a lecture that is interactive, uses the Socratic Method, and is similar to storytelling (as Peter pointed out), is very effective. Sometimes the material is so difficult, that you need a professor to facilitate the learning. Finally, an expert can inspire learning in ways that an expert textbook can't.

The lecturer can react to the audience, which a book can't. You can ask the lecturer to clarify, to solve another example.

Yes the instructor can do these things, but a lecture is not nessecary for these things to happen. Why not read the textbook outside the classroom and then come to class to work on problems, like office hours in class.

Answering students' questions is not lecturing.

@AnonymousPhysicist, it isn't, but a lecture certainly is a meeting where this should happen.

@JoshuaBenabou, that is called "flipped class".

Yes this flipped class thing makes a lot more sense to me. Why is this not more common....

@AnonymousPhysicist: Not in itself, but answering a question can often be a springboard for expanding on an idea or even introducing a new one and hence in effect be part of a lecture.

@JoshuaBenabou  " Why not read the textbook outside the classroom and then come to class to work on problems"  What you're describing is called a flipped classroom. These have proven very useful in many contexts.  Lots of research into them.

Interesting question. I've often asked myself the same question during my undergraduate years. You shouldn't just attend all lectures because not all will be useful. You should also not just ignore all lectures and study from a book.  Its a judgement you have to make personally in finding the right balance. A few points might help: the subject, the lecturer and the student's preferred style of learning.

Subject: There are certain subjects that are quite easy to learn from a textbook. For example I would say biological sciences/history should be fairly straight forward to read from a book-in fact its often necessary to get a good background from a book in order to make the most of a fast paced lecture. One advantage of attending lectures though is to learn about new or cutting edge knowledge in a particular field. A lecture can also give you useful insights that you've never thought about during your personal reading. By attending a lecture, you often get a feel for what a lecturer cares about and hence what's likely to come out in your exams.
The lecturer: I think good lecturers have a way of injecting life into their subjects beyond anything you can experience from a book. However, habits such as reading directly what's already on the powerpoint slide just doesn't motivate students-you might as well just read the slide in your room. A student will definitely get more out a very interactive class and get to learn from other student's mistakes. Other students often ask questions that you're too shy to ask yourself and you learn from it. So in summary, attend the lectures of the really good lecturers on your course. Students are good at spotting good lecturers and their classes are often very packed.
Preferred learning style: I think its important to get to know yourself and understand your preferred learning style. Some people learn a lot from lectures, some like making notes during lectures whilst others learn more from books. Whatever your learning style is though, there's a high chance you will learn from a very good lecture.

All in all, I think learning is a two way process: you can read all you can but you also need to obtain feedback from others to consolidate your learning. This you can get from very good lectures. At the end of the day, its your time and you have to decide how best to spend it.

Lectures help lazy students who don't want to read the whole book and do all the exercises in the book, to pass the exam.

And what is the point of passing the exam? (rhetorical question)

@JoshuaBenabou: Likewise, what is the point of reading the textbook if attending the lecture allows you to acquire the needed knowledge?

Because attending the lecture means you have to copy notes, notes which are written elsewhere. And it means you have to go at the pace of the lecturer. And it means you are less flexible time wise - what if its a nice day and you want to sit outside and read the textbook instead of sitting for 3 hours in a crowded lecture hall.

Think about a standard book: you can read it, or hear the audiobook.
The first one is at you pace, the second at the pace of the narrator. I remember I heard a text I read before, and found dull, read by a great narrator. And I found the text wonderful afterward. Because I was now able to catch the inner pace of the writer, the important turnpoint, and I needed someone to guide me.
A written book can be somehow flat. A great teacher can understand when a student is lost, and provide alternative explanation, or a different narrative. Or play with time.
Finally, some people cannot read, or do not have hands to turn pages. We do have our own means to remember or understand. There are different kinds of learners. Some are more visual, some auditive, some kinesthetic. It is likely that visual ones may be ok with the book, but sometimes senses merge, and sight + audition reinforce themselves.

A lecture involves the medium of audio, and some people find this medium more conducive, or the combination of the whiteboard and audio to be more conducive to absorbing new information. Besides this it is to some extent a social experience and a time-constrained activity, the latter helping people with low self-discipline or self-motivational capability, pace their study. To others it might be a nuisance. Notwithstanding the other analyses about the historical roots and relation to modern technology, I think this is one succinct response to the question.
Personally, I find that lectures should be more of a thing of the past as things go forward, but finding the right replacement, or evolution, should be done with experimentation and care.

Everyone learns in a different way. There are a variety of different learners. In this I mean that some people may be able to grasp and understand the material and information better by hearing someone speak or by seeing it in written words. Some have combined learning styles, while others have a preference for one type of learning. There is a wide variety of ways that a professor or teacher can give the material to the student. The best would be for a teacher to give students multiple means of understanding or getting the information, as to not leave any one behind. If only this was done in more education settings, it would be ideal.

Learning styles are only a preference.  They do not indicate the effectiveness of a teaching method.

yes, you have a valid point. But I think if some if there are more types of the same material, it does help the individual learn in a more efficient way. But I guess this also goes into educational theory and personal or intellectual opinions on the topic.

"Learning styles" is quackery, not science. Please don't propagate harmful myths.

@EnergyNumbers, quackery may be too strong a word.  Learning styles are preferences, and those preferences appear very consistently in experiments.  Businesses that promote learning styles as a useful tool may be dishonest, though.

@BenCrowell "Not yet well studied" and "isn't true" are kinda far apart, don't you think?

The Cone of Learning is the key to the answer. We retain a lot more of what we hear than what we read silently.

It's analogous (though not as extreme) as arguing that music students who can read notes don't need to listen to music, they can just read the sheet music. You're not stimulating as wide a range of nerve receptors.
(less relevantly, as someone who has a reading disability (but went to an Ivy League university), I can assure you from personal experience that I got 85% of my knowledge from lectures and 15% from textbooks, though I tried sincerely hard to do all the reading assignments.)

Learning from lectures alone is very slow. Learning from books alone is faster. Learning from both books and lectures at the same time is very fast.
Edit: Since this answer is apparently unpopular, let me explain it a little bit more clearly. I have a PhD in Chemical Engineering and taught college-level chemistry for a few years, so I know something about how people learn difficult material and what makes a class effective. I don't have research data to back up these statements, so it is possible that other people would have a different experience. However, I have never met a person who did. I don't mean I have never met a person who did well in school without going to lectures, or without reading the book. What I mean is, I have never met a person who did not learn fastest from both lectures and the book.
Yes, you can learn via either method alone, and different people tend to learn more easily from one or other. It is also possible that a good lecturer can be more effective than a bad book, and vice versa.
My statement assumes that the quality of both the lecturer and the book are good (or at least equivalent), and is about efficiency - how much time/effort does it take to learn something. The reason books are more efficient than lectures in general has to do with information bandwidth. A book can communicate more complex material in a shorter time than a lecture can. The reason that lectures in conjunction with books are the most effective way to learn is that a good lecture can tell you what parts of the book to focus on - a good teacher points out the most important details. It also gives you a different view of the same material, and reinforces memory through repetition.

What evidence do you have of this? Not everyone learns the same way and some students struggle to learn anything from a textbook but can pass a course on lectures alone.

No, it is not. Spending 4 hours per week for a semester is 60+ hours where trying to learn differential equations from a book would take much longer.

@Memj I taught for several years and have a PhD, so I've taken lots of classes. This statement is based on my personal experience and observation of peers and students.
Your statement is not incorrect, but I think you missed the point of mine.

@Alexandros - I do not think you can learn D.E. just by sitting in lectures. I am sure you would need to practice at some point, and you will get much more out of your practice time with a book than with lecture notes alone.

@thomj. 2 hours for 1 lecture and 1 hour to revisit / redo the exercises done in the lecture is enough to learn DE. It worked for me and many others, without even opening the book, by just reading from my notes and lecturer's handouts. Learning straight from the book without the lecture will be much-much slower.

@Alexandros - I don't think that what you are saying is contradicting what I am saying.


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Are extended periods of unpaid leave compatible with an academic career?
In Academia, a sabbatical means a leave to do only research, as opposed to an unpaid leave to do anything you want.
A recent question over on The Workplace SE raises the situation where  someone has too much money and just want to have more time. — like working for 6-9 months per year, which would earn one enough to spend the rest of the time travelling.  Regardless of the relatively low pay in parts of Academia, the same situation may apply, in particular to DINKs.
The answers mostly boil down to: be a consultant or freelancer..  That may work in the software industry or other private sectors, but it doesn't translate very well to academia.
Is a career which includes one or more extended unpaid leaves, such as sabbaticals in the classic meaning of the word, or unpaid leaves in the order of 3 months or more in a row, compatible with working in academia at all?  If yes, how?
Clarification: I am interested in answers considering either a career that contains specific gaps (such as a year to see the world, either between jobs, or interrupting a job), or a fixed job that contains less than 12 months per year (minus holidays) of work.

Depends on the type of prof you are, but it could be possible. May-August are often academic holes where nothing is happening. Some people could shut down during that time.

In Sweden, new parents are entitled to 18 months of leave. Generally, that is 12 months for the mother and 6 months for the father. Academics have children and do take this kind of time of, and come back to work. And, they do it multiple times. Also, if you don't have grant money in the US, you don't get paid for the summer. So why work?

@DaveClarke I've mostly seen Swedish academics take those parental leaves in smaller chunks, in particular attaching to the summer so that the parents have as much time off as the children (10 weeks per summer).  But is it good for their career?  Or does it hurt?

In Sweden, it is actively encouraged to take time off with your kids. That said, my plan is to make sure my 6 months off includes the summer months (assuming there will be another one). Does it hurt? In the long run, probably not so much.

Frequent, extended periods of unpaid leave are easily compatible with certain types of academic careers, such as teaching as an adjunct on a course-by-course basis.  However, this involves low pay and no prestige or job security, so it's far from an ideal solution.
There will be a lot of obstacles to doing this with a tenure-track job.  Your collaborators will be unhappy when you put the collaboration on hold to go do something else.  You colleagues will be unhappy when you aren't available to teach courses or supervise students (thereby making the department work around what they consider to be your eccentricities).  Wanting to take substantial amounts of time off will be considered a bad sign, and everyone will worry about what you might do once you have tenure.  Your chances of getting tenure will go down.
Taking time off can also make you a less productive researcher, even normalized by the amount of time you spend on research.  The problem is that keeping up with the field takes a certain amount of time and effort.  If you work on research for only six months per year, you still need to keep up with twelve months of progress by others, so it's as if the rest of the world were moving twice as fast.
It's not impossible that you could find a flexible academic job.  You might end up with a specially negotiated soft-money position (funded by grants under whatever terms the funding agency will agree to), you might take a job at a less prestigious university than you could have (who are so eager to hire you that they are willing to make a deal), or you might happen to find an unusually accommodating department.  Unfortunately, this isn't something most people can reasonably expect to work out.  I don't know what the chances are, but I expect they are pretty low on average.  The academic job market is tough, and adding non-standard constraints makes it even tougher.  If you can't be happy without frequent, extended leaves, and you have good non-academic employment options that fit your needs, then that might be the way to go.
Another theoretical option is to take advantage of tenure: work hard, don't tell anyone your plans, and then quit doing any academic work over the summer once you get tenure.  You shouldn't do this.  Your colleagues will feel resentful, the administration will be upset, and you'll be manipulating the system in a way tenure is not intended to support (and thus weakening the case for having tenure at all).  If you're too extreme, you could run into trouble with a post-tenure review, depending on your university's policies.
[I'm assuming you intend to use the leaves for something entirely unrelated to your academic career.  If it's more closely related, such as applying your scholarly expertise to government service, then you may have better luck.  However, it doesn't sound like that's what you're talking about.]

Makes sense.  One comment Taking time off can also make you a less productive researcher, even normalized by the amount of time you spend on research. — I'm not sure this is true when normalised.  One question: how about taking 6 months off between jobs; between PhD and post-doc, between post-docs, etc.?

I just mean that if you spend half as much time doing research, then either you end up spending less time learning what other people are doing (hurting your breadth and perspective or ability to find connections), or you have to devote twice as high as percentage of your time to that (leaving less time for your own work).  But how well this works out is a personal matter.  For example, if time off leaves you feeling rejuvenated, then it might help you do better work.

Time off might not be fully black and white either.  Someone going on a 10,000 km cycling trip could still download some papers to his e-reader now and then.  But that it sets one back compared to people working conventionally, that is clear.

One case when this does happen in an academic setting is when faculty get on a glide path to retirement. In such cases, it's possible to negotiate a reduced workload (and pay). The incentive here is that the department can sometimes use this (along with other funds) to support hiring a new faculty member: since faculty slots are expensive commodities, such an arrangement works for everyone.
Your question doesn't indicate the level of the person who might want to do part-time academic work. I think it goes without saying that doing this before tenure is a BAD IDEA for reasons already outlined above. But if someone is tenured but far from retirement, it might be possible to pull off such an arrangement if the department sees an opportunity to cash in on it via new hiring.

Suppose that someone has a one-year gap between the end of the PhD and the first post-doc, or between two post-docs.  Is that really such a bad idea?  If you would review such a person for a tenure-track position, ask about the gap, and the person would declare, “I was hiking to Mongolia”.  Would that be so bad?

No, certainly not. But a 1-year gap is not the same as a continued period of downtime for a number of years, which is what I thought the question was about.

It's about both (sabbaticals in the classic meaning of the word, or unpaid leaves in the order of 3 months or more in a row,); I'd classify a one-year gap as a sabbaticals in the classic meaning of the word.

ah. but then it's not at all uncommon to go on leave for a year. Usually you're going on leave to go somewhere else, so the person doing this would need some skilled negotiation to finagle a leave that isn't "going somewhere else"

I think the previous answers were focused on academic positions focused on research. However I know of colleges and some universities where the teaching load drops off dramatically in the summer and during certain summers it's possible to be off for at least 8 weeks without pay. To me this is very acceptable considering that you will also get 3 weeks around Christmas.
You can also consider working remotely for some periods, if your research allows you to do so. I think also that traveling hard every year for 3-6 months might be hard to pull off, physically and mentally for many years. But if you could rent a house for 2 months on the beach of Fiji and work from there, that doesn't sound too bad :-)

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What is the minimum time one should spend in a post-doc?
Suppose one has been hired for a three-year postdoc.  Three years give sufficient opportunity to get some work done, without moving to a new country every year.  Possibly, an opportunity might arise to move to something permanent before the three years are finished (either in academia, or in industry, or in government research labs, or somewhere on the edge of those).  However, the postdoc supervisor, who has invested time and money in a postdoc in order to get a project done, might be disappointed if the postdoc leaves a job unfinished.
On one extreme, I know someone who has been a postdoc at the current place for 5½ years, and they were a postdoc somewhere else before that.  I suppose spending 8 years in postdocs does not help when applying for permanent positions.  On the other hand, I know someone who has been a postdoc for only seven months or so, and is already applying for a primarily teaching position at a somewhat lesser known university, possibly a position where major post-PhD results are not essential.
What is the minimum one should spend in a postdoc, before even starting to consider applying for possibly permanent positions?  I mean this question broadly; an answer may either be expressed in time (one year) or in results (one major and one minor first-author paper).  Of course, without any significant results, finding a faculty position at a major place will be hard if not impossible.  But the question here is related to the moral obligation to complete some of the task one has been hired to do.

Related question with different focus: Postdoc position: should I stay for one year or two years?

What is the minimum one should spend in a postdoc, before even starting to consider applying for possibly permanent positions? — The correct answer is negative. You should consider your post-postdoc employment options even before you start your postdoc.

@JeffE I mean that if I move to a different place 6 months into a postdoc, the postdoctoral supervisor may be unhappy.

Can you clarify your field of study?  Post-docs > 2 years in the social sciences are not common -- and, it is often the case that the post doc has either a 1 or 2 year commitment on a standard academic calendar.  It would be a rarity to see somebody in the social sciences to have completed multiple post-docs.

I'm in atmospheric science.

possible duplicate of Is it common and acceptable for a postdoc to leave before contract ends?

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How do people changing fields after PhD overcome competition with "locals"?
There are a number of questions here about changing-fields.  Those are mostly about how common it is, how it affects future career, or whether a move from X to Y is feasible (example 1, 2, 3).  At any rate, it does happen — I have come across people with background in particle physics, astrophysics, or space science, who were all in postdocs in atmospheric science.  A frequent motivation may be to resolve the two body problem.  And some fields have a higher ratio of jobs to PhD graduates than others.
But if someone with a PhD in particle physics, astrophysics, or space science, applies for a post-doc in atmospheric science, how do they overcome the competition with candidates who do have PhDs specialising in (the right subfield of) atmospheric science?  Wouldn't a potential host quickly dismiss candidates who show neither experience nor interest in the relevant field, even if they have spoken the person, when other applicants are pre-trained "locals"?

Some of my best hires have had virtually no direct or recent experience in HPC, but have demonstrated a number of other extremely desirable features including:

A passion for learning and doing
A clear track record of success in their related area (including publishing, mentoring, grant-writing, etc.).
An strong awareness of their own limitations in the field and a plan for dealing with them
A strong understanding of our needs based on researching our mission, goals, website, etc. and a plan for how they fit into that.

Based on this, I've taken a flyer on a researcher or two who wasn't a perfect fit but was too passionate, engaging, and obviously successful to pass up. A ridiculously strong reference is also helpful.

Speaking as someone trying to change fields, the main problem is people judging by your cover (department, classes taken, title of thesis). Even if you have learnt a lot on your own, if it isn't encoded in something more formal, it's hard to show via email that you know anything.
The most important thing is to meet them in person - then (of course, provided that you do know basics of the field you are applying to!) it is much easier to show that you actually know things in their field. To arrange such meeting, if you need their reimbursement, contacts may help a lot (both in terms of "a friend of your advisor" and recommendation letters, even if informal, putting the emphasis on your skills or interest in the target field).
Then, people hire based on their needs. Sometimes they care more for a different background (e.g. more computational, more mathematical, more statistical...), and it can be your advantage.


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Is a IEEE student member counted as a member in a submission to a transaction?
I am going to submit a paper to a IEEE transaction. I am a student member of IEEE. In the auther line of the paper, do I append "IEEE, Member", "IEEE, Student Member" or nothing after my name?

I think "IEEE, Student Member" is the best choice.

Why do you want to hide your affiliation with your university?

@user13107: IEEE stupidly insists that all authors who are IEEE members identify themselves as such on the title page.  The authors' university/industry affiliations are listed on the title page as well.


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Why do some conference have an "abstract submission" before the "paper submission"?
I noticed that some conference have different deadline for paper submission: an "abstract" submission deadline, before the usual "paper" submission deadline.
For example, on the International Semantic Web Conference 2013 webpage you can read:

Submission dates
  Abstracts: May 1, 2013
  Full Paper Submission: May 10, 2013

Why do they need the abstract before the paper?
To estimate how many papers they'll get?

Also, some conferences have Author registration deadline

This seems to be very computer science specific. I'm not saying that it is off topic, but based on the answers, it is clear that other fields do things very differently.

In my field (chemistry/spectroscopy/chemometrics), the abstract decides whether you'll get an oral presentation or a poster (total rejection is extremely rare).
The paper submission deadline is usually after the conference.
Once submitted, the paper undergoes normal peer-review for the journal it is submitted to, which doesn't have anything to do with the presentation at the conference. The only connection is that the conference organisers have spoken with the journal editors that they'll collect papers about topics presented at the conference in a special issue of the journal.
So the paper deadline is needed by the journal editors to make people submit in time so that the special issue will be ready at the specified date.

An unspoken reason is to enable conference presenters to prepare their abstract months before their paper or poster is ready, while they are still doing their research. Some large conferences, such as the American Geophysical Union, request abstracts months in advance of final submission. What's a struggling (or highly distinguished--both find themselves in the same predicament) researcher to do? Write something, and hope that by the time of the conference, the research meets or exceeds the statement of the abstract.


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In universities, how to team up with your colleagues?
Many times in universities, people don't dedicate much time to build friendly relationships with colleagues.
Unfortunately, this happens both in the tenured positions and in non-tenured positions, with many bad consequences (such as for examples, many researchers actually don't know what other colleagues are researching on...).
I've always been thinking that building strong friend relationships with colleagues can be very useful and powerful, for careers but most of all to create a more serene work environment.
I think that a good way to create friendly relationships with colleagues is organizing extra-work activities, such as dinners, soccer matches, etc.
Last week some of my PhD student colleagues organized a pizza dinner between colleagues. All my department (~150) PhD students were invited, but in the end we were just 9! :-(
What d'you do to build strong friend relationships with colleagues?
Could you tell some success stories?
Could you give some good advices?

In my experience, a lot of academics tend to shy away from things like a pizza party. I would suggest thinking about things that connect common interests. For example, consider starting a book club on some relatively broad topic of interest, or a group where folks read and comment on each other's work. These kind of things can be really valuable of they  ring together folks from different specalizations. It is always good to get a different perspective.
As another example, think about setting up a brown bag lecture series. These can be great ways to get folks out of their offices and talking.
Beyond this, I would generaly suggest not trying to set up events that have 150 people invited. Think smaller and more targeted.

Thanx, Trevor. What is a brown bag lecture series?

It is a reference to the kinds of brown bags people bring their lunches to work in. Brown bag lectures are presentations or discussions where people are encouraged to bring and eat their lunch.

In our department, the assistant professors go out for drinks once a month (a fixed day of the week and a fixed week of the month). That tends to work out quite well: we can let off steam, compare notes on our students (and what senior faculty dish out in the name of advice :)), and generally get a nice group. I've had a few collaborations start because of this as well.
The general faculty also do a drinks night occasionally, but not as regularly.

Eat lunch with people.
While many researcher don't have very flexible schedules, they do occasionally eat. However, creating a structured lunch environment where there is a daily meeting location at a consistent time with a knowledge that anyone can drop by without feeling excluded, closeted academics might feel like they might have to make time to grab some lunch.
Then there are the occasional department happy hours.

Be a leader!
Make a research group,
Know what you want to do and divide the works,
Do not waste your time on finding friends,
Be a person whose character is interesting for other people,
Be yourself, be the guy who has big dreams,
Then you have a team with people who want to have a role in your work.
Never try to be the person who follows the others,
Be the person who is followed by others.

"do not waste your time on finding friends" is a strange perspective on a question about finding friendly relationships.

I mentioned this because trying to find friends just make you far away from your true self. Be yourself, friends are like magnets, if you be yourself, you will have friends who like you because of your true character not because of your strive for doing whatever they like you to do. That is all I mentioned. I did not say friendship is bad but true friendship differs from being a follower.


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What versions of a paper do I still hold rights to?
I just had my first paper accepted for publication (hooray!), but I'm wondering how copyright works for the paper. I know that for this publication, the publishing house owns the copyright of the final version, but I'm wondering if that means that I still have rights to distribute earlier versions (e.g., on academia.edu).
If so, which version? I.e., how different does it have to be from the final version?

It depends of the journals, I try to keep a pre-print version on my website (last round of revision before publishing) and I am hoping no one will complain. And congratulations on your paper!

After accepting the article, the journal will ask you to sign a copyright transfer.  This document should describe in detail what rights the publisher gets, and what rights you retain.  If it isn't acceptable to you, you can try to negotiate; your institution may have an intellectual property office that could help. If all else fails, you can withdraw the paper and submit it to a journal with different policies (perhaps even an open access journal).
It is pretty common for the author to retain the right to distribute preprints.
Congratulations on your paper!

A little more googling would have served me well - another answer directed me to http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo, which looks a good resource for determining rights for each journal.

That's a good link to check on journals before you publish, but after you have submitted, checking the journal's statement of copyright transfer (as mentioned by Nate Eldredge) is the safer way to know your rights.

I suppose you've just answered the question yourself, but I'd like to add that
a) it seems very common to make a copy of the paper available on your own site (or something like academia.edu) so I would think most journals do allow this (at least in CS)
b) it is good practice, too, since it makes it a lot easier for people who research your work to be able to download the paper straight away rather than having to go through institutional logins or have no access at all.


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Timing an internship during PhD
Suppose there is an engineering PhD student who is unsure whether to join academia or the industry after his PhD. He does not want to take chances and applies for internship positions during the course of his PhD. Here is a dilemma: the internship is certain to eat into vital amount of time he could otherwise spend thinking about his research problem. OTOH, when he is not fully into research, he is unlikely to get attractive research-based internship positions.
How should a PhD candidate time his internship in a way that it does not affect his research and is also a very valuable experience on his PhD resume?

This is a "Goldilocks" problem—you should try to schedule an internship late enough that you have enough experience to be of interest to a potential internship sponsor, but early enough so that it can have an effect on your long-term development (if you feel it was a sufficiently positive or negative experience to sway your sentiments).
As a result, I would say that you should typically do this in the middle of your PhD—probably around your third year or so (assuming that you're in a typical US graduate program that runs five to six years for a PhD). If you're in a European-style system, where the coursework has been done before the PhD starts, then it should be done somewhat earlier—perhaps from the middle of the second year on.

This is exactly right. If you try for an internship too early, anything you're likely to get will not be interesting enough work from a research perspective.

I think you're creating a false dichotomy by saying

the internship is certain to eat into vital amount of time he could
  otherwise spend thinking about research problems

Internships are places where sometimes REALLY interesting problems come up. Especially in engineering, while it's not critical, it's very important to keep a finger on what's happening in industry - the industry/academia divide is a matter of time-horizon rather than fundamental nature of the problem.
Of course you need to have enough experience to recognize interesting problems, which goes back to @aeismail's answer. I will also say that doing it late in your career isn't that bad either, because then you get a three-month interview for a job. That's how I got my first one :)

Although the answers above are great, I would like to share a different perspective mainly because I disagree with necessarily waiting until the 3rd year of your Phd.
In a lot of internships, you're exposed to new areas or new perspectives in the same area which can affect your current interests.
Although school is good and working on research is even better, still, you learn work mainly at work.

I think internships are an accessory to research. I believe that the positioning and frequency of internships doesn't matter as long as they are relevant to one's PhD [by relevant I mean that if work done on internships could be written down on the final PhD dissertation and/or lead to meaningful publications]. Finding/Securing the correct internship that could positively propel one's PhD is a challenge, but it is doable.
I believe having the wisdom to decide whether an internship could contribute to one's research depends on where you currently stand in the PhD timeline. There is a distinction between a PhD student and a PhD candidate, which I want to point out as you mentioned both the terms.
A PhD candidate is an advanced PhD student, which means he/she is aware of the fundamental concepts of a particular research area (since a PhD candidate has successfully qualified the core requirements of a dept., which involves getting satisfactory grades in certain key courses for his/her specialization track). So he/she is in a better position (in terms of judgement) to not settle for just any internship (as there are significant amount of internship opportunities for PhD students [this of course depends on country/funding/discipline]), but only the ones that ties well with one's PhD goals. For instance if someone's specialization area is compilers, then doing an internship on quantitative research might not be very useful in the near term.
For PhD students (in first or second year), since they are (relatively) new in the field and learning the ropes (as majority of their time is spent on courses, reviewing/reading papers, and doing research in whatever time is left), seeking counsel from mentors/adviser regarding internship is fruitful. They could help in a multitude of ways.


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Doing bad in undergraduate but good in a masters program
Suppose you do bad in undergraduate school in say computer science. But you do very well in a masters program in computer science. If you want to apply to a PhD program in computer science, will the masters degree grades offset the undergraduate degree grades?

Related question: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/973/phd-opportunities-when-lacking-publications.

What does bad mean? in general, undergraduate  grades count more.. more grades to see, plus more indicative overall. ..but try n see

@Adel what I found was although I did badly during my undergrad (B/BC grade), I did reasonably well during my masters degree (AB/A grade) and that tipped the scale in my favor for admission into the PHD program.

Sort of.
I was in exactly the situation you describe 20+ years ago.  My undergrad GPA was horrible (even restricted to computer science classes); my MS GPA was near-perfect; I got into Berkeley as a PhD student.  But I don't think the improvement in my grades was as important as the improvement in my letters.  My undergrad letters said "He's smart but lazy", which is the kiss of death.  My MS letters were much more positive.  Also, when I applied to Berkeley, I had some research results in submission, so my positive letters had some substance to draw on.
Also, I got very, very, very lucky.
Now, as a faculty member who reviews PhD applications, I would certainly look at the improvement in grades as a good sign.  But as I've mentioned elsewhere, above a certain threshold of "good enough", grades don't matter.  Especially since you're applying with a master's degree, your demonstrated research ability is much more important.

In particular, I'd take this to mean that you should have some research component of your degree (that is, a thesis), and you should hopefully receive the highest possible grade on such a thesis (or as close to it as possible). What amounts to a "B" grade won't help.

In general, recent performance will tend to outweigh prior performance. I will look at a student with a graduate 4.0 and an undergraduate 3.2 much more favorably than the converse (unless there are obvious extenuating circumstances, such as a large jump in the quality of the graduate program compared to the undergraduate).
The source of the GPA drop is also important. A bad freshman year is almost certainly ignorable. A bad senior year is a red flag. Similarly, I will give much less weight to grades in "general education" classes, as I'm not hiring them based on their ability to analyze Shakespeare or Milton.  Important classes for the major, though, can be deadly even if they are in the undergraduate years.


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How to transition into computer science
I currently hold a BA in Middle Eastern History, which was a pretty good fit for my last job in the Army.  I'm getting ready to move on to the civillian world now, and computer science/programming has always been a hobby for me that I'd like to look into turning into a career.
My question is, what type of program should I look into in order to deepen my knowledge and verify my abilities?  Should I look at getting a second undergrad, or would a programming education certificate be enough to get my foot in the door for employment/grad school later on?  Are online certificates such as Kaplan/Phoenix respected enough, especially if they are in addition to a traditional degree?
I basically want to know where to set my sights, in order to get going in software development.  Getting an additional qualification seems necessary, so which kind makes the most sense for getting started?

Are online certificates such as Kaplan/Phoenix respected enough — Oh dear god I hope not.

I've never worked in a job where I needed such a certification, but I think generally Microsoft certifications are given much more respect than something like Kaplan/Phoenix.

this would also be a good question for http://workplace.stackexchange.com/ - they may give you different advice, e.g. working on open source projects, networking, etc

I agree with @Amy, and would actually suggest that, if you're looking for a professional rather than an academic career, you're on the wrong site. There's no particular need to get an academic degree for a career in software development; employers in that field tend to put more value on practical skills, as demonstrated by prior work (including hobbyist work) and/or directly during the hiring process. Certifications may also be useful, at least for satisfying formal qualifications and for demonstrating a basic level of competence.

This is not so much about transitioning into computer science, but into software development/programming. Plenty of programming courses are available at different levels. When applying for a job, typically the employer is interested in your programming background (what you claim to know, what you can demonstrate you know, and your experience). So expand your programming knowledge and practice programming, too.

I think it's going to depend vastly on what kind of position you want to be headed into, and how deep down the rabbit hole you wish to go.
The one thing I would say you ought to focus on is fundamentals: No matter what kind of work you end up doing, be it programming business processes or pursuing a PhD, getting your fundamentals straight will pay dividends over and over again. Courses in algorithms, software engineering, computer architecture, each will give you a different view into the work you do, no matter where you're doing it. A CS undergraduate degree would be a good choice, especially if grad studies is where you want to go after. I understand they vary in quality though, so that's something to bear in mind.

I teach in the post-bac CS program at Mills College, which is aimed at people (like you) who have earned a bachelor's degree in a field other than CS and want to transition into CS, most in order to go into software engineering (although we also prepare students for PhD programs and teaching).
While not quick or cheap, post-bac programs are usually a better choice than a second bachelor's degree, since students don't have to take anything other than CS and related math courses, and many of your peers will be in a similar position to yours.

Depending on what you are aiming for (i.e. working at a tech. company versus being a professor) you may have enough qualifications already.
The programming industry is still an industry that is extremely forgiving to those who do not have "qualifications" but who can do the necessary work. This is likely due to the age of the industry and the cross-disciplinary nature.
If you feel you need more traditional preparation sites like Coursera and others that provide Massively Open Online Courses (MOOC's) are a great place to get some CS courses and you can take some "Intro" courses and more advanced ones for free (paid certificates are also available). Also working on real open source projects (Github is one place to start looking for them) that align with your interests and skills will proved that you are capable and be a great resume item.
From what you have written I think that you are just as well off spending time finding a company that needs the skills you already have (if you are a hobbyist you likely know at lest one language pretty well) and practicing the skills you do have.


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Are there Conference Proceedings that have impact factor?
In Medicine, an Impact Factor of a journal is important indicator (IF) of journal quality.
Are there examples of conference proceedings that have a formal IF figure computed?

I sincerely hope not ;)

@Suresh - What do you mean by that?

I'm sure he means exactly what I would have meant if he hadn't typed that.  Impact factors are stupid.  If you want to know whether a paper is good, read the paper.

What he said :)

@JeffE There are other purposes than to check whether a paper is good. For example, if one wishes to get an overview of what's going on in the field, they'll look up conference proceedings. Tracking the top 2 or 5 conferences in one's field should be enough. The logic being that if there is a remarkable development, it will be unable to bypass the top few conferences — even if the seminal publication isn't there, don't forget the layer of careerists, whose main aim is to get an early publication on a hot topic in a high-profile journal, with their name on it. So, enumerate the top conferences.

Are there examples of conference proceedings that have a formal IF figure computed?

There is nothing like the "formal IF". What you are referring to is probably the Thomson Reuter's Journal Citation Reports impact factor which is one of the most respected measures in the academic world. As such, to my best knowledge there is no such thing for conferences.
However, there are other sources which could prove useful as an estimate of conference quality:

As already Charles pointed out, there are exist cached versions of Citeseer's estimated impact factors for computer science, but this is too old to be useful.
Furthermore, Google Scholar lists ranks of top venues mixing journals and conferences in their listings. Here is an example of top publications for AI, as you might see, there are several conferences mixed in. They list h-index of the venue instead of an impact factor.
Another very useful, resource for ranking conferences is Microsoft Academic Search, where you can find profiles of conferences, such as this one for IJCAI and they also publish rankings for different categories of venues, see an example here.
Finally, you might find useful the Australian Research Council's ERA conference rankings from 2010. In 2012 they decided not to rank conferences any more, but the 2010 list is still very useful and at least somewhat authoritative. They would rank conferences into categories according to their own quality metrics, which however (at least in my area) correlate with the community's perception.

which is the measure in the academic world — This claim is simply false.  The most important measure of impact of a scientific publication is the actual impact of that publication.  Impact factors are for people who lack either the expertise or the guts to make informed quality judgements.

@JeffE: yes, of course you are right. But whether we like it or not, we get measured by such metrics anyway. And Thomson's is the metrics used whenever somebody decides to rank our performance. But I edited the answer to somewhat please souls which are unhappy about these metrics anyway.

...except in computer science.

@JeffE: you should write "except in computer science in the USA". That would be more precise. In other countries the habits differ, somewhere they would develop their own metrics, somewhere they would use Thomson's measure also for compsci. See also my answer to this question.

I suppose to be really precise, I should write "except for strong, self-governed computer science departments".  I've never heard of a strong CS department, in any country, imposing such a metric on itself.  (On the other hand, I'm approaching No True Scotsman territory here.)

@JeffE: I could point to CS departments on which this kind of metrics is imposed by their faculty/university. Did you ever wonder why many mediocre journals publish so many papers prevalently of Chinese, Eastern-European, or African origin, while we don't see any of those results presented at conferences? This kind of policy is to blame. They get "points" for WoS tracked journal publications (even if 3rd tier, nobody cares), but a plain zero for a paper at even a very prestigious conference.

Indeed, some CS departments insist that you publish only in the "top ten" venues according to their own personal ranking (where quality is unfortunately not measured by actual quality but by means we all abhor) or that you have a very good reason to do otherwise.

That's why I said "strong".

As I just came across this questions. I think walkmanyi already came up with a nice overview. However, I realized that the SCImago Journal Rank indicator was not mentioned so far. According to Wikipedia SCImago uses the same formula as that for the calculation of the Thomson Reuters impact factor. SCImago also features many conferences.

Some years ago Thomson Reuters decided to drop Proceedings from their regular citation index list and start a separate proceedings index. This caused a lot of problems for journals that published papers from meetings but where the review procedure was as stringent as in a regular journal. I guess Thomson Reuters thinking was that proceedings would be lower quality in general. The solution to the problem for one particular journal (that did not have any wordings in its title that referred to proceedings) was to state in the journal "selected papers from the 'so-and-so' meeting". It would then pass as a proper journal.
I do not know how the proceedings index faired but obviosuly this meant that many journals were dropped from the index and they were thus not resulting in impact factors any more.
So from the point of Thomson Reuters, they wanted to separate possible lower quality proceedings journals from higher quality refereed journals and create a separate index for the proceedings. What the main reason for this was in unclear since it struck both higher and lower quality journals without distinction.
(I must admit I feel awkward using high and low quality in this reply but think of it as a relative term)

hye PPl!
Excellent blog , Actually conference proceedings have no IMPACT factor .
If you are still aint buying it then read the link below
http://conferenceseries.iop.org/content/quick_links/Policy%20on%20Impact%20Factor
Policy on Impact Factor
Under current policy, Thompson Reuters (the owners of ISI Web of Science) do not calculate Impact Factors for ANY proceedings titles. Therefore, proceedings journals are not issued with Impact Factors.
 hope it clears the ambiguity

At the moment, there are 56 proceedings-journals which have an Impact Factor according to the only source of Impact factors, the Journal Citation Reports (Thompson Reuters). These journals have the word proceedings in their title, and presumably concern conference proceedings.
Later edit: This list is just a suggestion which might help to gather some additional information. The titles have not been checked they really are Conference Proceedings.
-   ALLERGY ASTHMA PROC
-   ASLIB PROC
-   J INVEST DERM SYMP P
-   MATH PROC CAMBRIDGE
-   MAYO CLIN PROC
-   P ACAD NAT SCI PHILA
-   P AM MATH SOC
-   P BIOL SOC WASH
-   P COMBUST INST
-   P EDINBURGH MATH SOC
-   P ENTOMOL SOC WASH
-   P EST ACAD SCI
-   P GEOLOGIST ASSOC
-   P I CIVIL ENG-CIV EN
-   P I CIVIL ENG-ENG SU
-   P I CIVIL ENG-GEOTEC
-   P I CIVIL ENG-MAR EN
-   P I CIVIL ENG-MUNIC
-   P I CIVIL ENG-STR B
-   P I CIVIL ENG-TRANSP
-   P I CIVIL ENG-WAT M
-   P I MECH ENG A-J POW
-   P I MECH ENG B-J ENG
-   P I MECH ENG C-J MEC
-   P I MECH ENG D-J AUT
-   P I MECH ENG E-J PRO
-   P I MECH ENG F-J RAI
-   P I MECH ENG G-J AER
-   P I MECH ENG H
-   P I MECH ENG I-J SYS
-   P I MECH ENG J-J ENG
-   P I MECH ENG K-J MUL
-   P I MECH ENG L-J MAT
-   P I MECH ENG M-J ENG
-   P I MECH ENG O-J RIS
-   P I MECH ENG P-J SPO
-   P IEEE
-   P INDIAN AS-MATH SCI
-   P JPN ACAD A-MATH
-   P JPN ACAD B-PHYS
-   P LOND MATH SOC
-   P NATL A SCI INDIA A
-   P NATL A SCI INDIA B
-   P NATL ACAD SCI USA
-   P NUTR SOC
-   P ROMANIAN ACAD A
-   P ROY SOC A-MATH PHY
-   P ROY SOC B-BIOL SCI
-   P ROY SOC EDINB A
-   P STEKLOV I MATH+
-   P YORKS GEOL SOC
-   SADHANA-ACAD P ENG S
-   TRANSPL P

Your answer seems to me factually incorrect and based on the assumption that the word "proceedings" in the journal tile means conference proceedings. This is not true in general. I checked some of the listed entries and those I checked, e.g., Allergy and Asthma Proceedings, as well as Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society are proper journals not conference proceedings. Therefore -1 and you should consider a fact-check plus a revision of your answer.


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What metrics are used to judge a mathematical journal's quality?
The metric I see most on the internet and on journals' home pages is the 'Impact Factor'. Are there any other metrics that are considered as important as (or more important than) the Impact Factor?

Does it publish good papers?  (Impact Factor is only for people who can't answer that question.)

To expand on JeffE's comment, impact factor gets zero respect among mathematicians.  It gets very little respect in any field, as far as I know, but it's a particularly bad measure for mathematics journals.  For example, it only counts citation received within two years of publication, which is just about the quickest turnaround time you could get in mathematics (given math's publishing practices and timing).  So numerically, the impact factor amounts to saying that if your paper doesn't inspire people to drop everything else and rush to get followup work into print quickly enough, then it has had zero impact.
Impact factors are also manipulated by journal editors, often enough to require serious work detecting and punishing this behavior.
The only reason impact factors exist at all is that administrators want simple ways to rate research productivity, especially in dysfunctional settings where there's no infrastructure of trusted experts.  Counting citations is easier to defend as "unbiased" than most other approaches.
There are many other numerical measures of journal quality, such as eigenfactors, but they are not popular or widely used.
In 2010, the Australian Research Council rated 20,000 journals by quality based on expert opinion (for example, see here for the math journals).  This is still not great, since the ratings miss subtleties (such as journals with greater strength in some subfields than others) and it's not clear how reliable they are for lesser-known journals anyway.  However, this is the closest anyone has come to giving a replacement for impact factors based on expert opinion.  Unfortunately, it was so much work that they decided not to do it again.

Now the Web of knowledge issues a five-year impact factor that may be considered (slightly) more relevant in some fields, like mathematics. Mathematicians sometimes convince people rating them to use the MathSciNet MCQ instead, which is a five-year impact factor computed with a mostly mathematic database.
The AMS Notices publish yearly a survey of the processing time of many mathematical journals; this is one aspect of the editorial process quality, probably the easiest to measure.
You can find surveys on the prices of journal, which is certainly a good measure of the commercial talent of the publisher.
Overall, quality can mean a lot different things and you should explain for what purpose you intend the measures to be used.

MCQ should be taken with a grain of salt for more applied journals, as it only deals with references within mathematics. If you are interested in an applied subfield, such as statistics or control theory, it might seriously underestimate the number of citations, especially since the "maths" vs. "not maths" distinction is necessarily drawn in an arbitrary place on a continuous spectrum of possibilities.

Considered important by whom? Funding agencies will obviously prefer something "objective" like the impact factor, immediacy index or cited half-life. Researchers usually have less quantitative criteria like where do my peers publish or what is the journal's reputation.