text:
Acceptance into graduate math programs
I have been hearing different views about my likelihood of getting accepted into a math graduate program.

Which of the following factors contribute most to the acceptance of a non-math undergraduate into a math graduate program (please order them)?

GPA
Recommendation letters
Publishing math papers

Since I am an engineering student I only registered basic math courses (such as calculus, linear algebra, etc.). However, I studied a lot of other more advanced courses by myself. My GPA is about 3.5. A lot of people have told me that I need to raise my GPA in order to get accepted into a decent math graduate program and this is worrying me.
Courses that I self-studied: Undergraduate abstract algebra, real analysis (with an introduction to measure theory), first 4 chapters of Munkres' Topology, elementary number theory, graph theory
Courses that I am self studying: Hungerford's abstract algebra, algebraic topology
Courses that I plan to study: algebraic geometry, algebraic number theory, complex analysis.
I also managed to finish 2 math papers. So the question is:
Where do I stand now?

I'll migrate the question.

What do you actually mean by "finish" and "math papers"?  Did you post them to the ArXiv?  Submit them to refereed journals?  Present them in the same research seminars as math grad students?  Or are they just sitting on your hard drive?

@JeffE  I coauthored one paper with one of my math doctors. It was submitted to MLQ. I have another one in my hard drive. I also have more in my notes.

I can't think of a math journal which abbreviates to MLQ.  Can you help me out?  (Edited: a google search returns Mathematical Logic Quarterly.  Is that it?)

@PeteL.Clark Yes this is it.

there's an answer that says 'The GPA of 3.5 is not that bad in engineering' 3.5/4 is 'not that bad'? sounds like it's really great. or maybe i don't understand the average u.s. (or wherever OP is from) university's meaning of 3.5/4. in my alma mater in country B (1 of the top 3 universities of country B. In my opinion, it's at least top 2, but whatever), 3.5/4 is the minimum to be cum laude.

@Amr If you don't mind, can you please update on your current situation now? It appears that you are active on MSE and Math over Flow, so you must have got a PhD program in mathematics if I'm not mistaken? It would also be great if you could answer your own question now with your current experience!

@user600016 Yes, I am currently doing my phd in differential geometry. I think the answers that are posted already contain everything I might wanna say

@Amr Oh that's great! Thanks

I don't see this question as being definitively answerable without a lot more information, both about your background and qualifications and about where you are applying.  Grad schools differ enormously in their approach to admissions in unusual cases.  Some lower-tier schools are eager to take a chance on smart but nontraditional applicants who will be rejected by more prestigious universities.  Others have established rigid rules after having had bad experiences with admitted students who had inadequate backrounds or didn't understand what they were getting themselves into.
Regarding grades, keep in mind that the world has seen a lot of grade inflation, and there are startlingly large numbers of applicants with nearly perfect grades.  You generally cannot impress an admissions committee by having excellent grades, although poor grades can hurt your chances.  Math departments typically care a lot about grades in mathematics and heavily mathematical fields (e.g., theoretical physics or CS), a little about grades in other scientific or engineering fields, and not at all about other grades, except that exceptionally poor grades in any field suggest the applicant is not good at getting things they don't care about done (which is not a good omen for their career).  I.e., math departments don't care if you get a B- in history, but getting an F in history could be a problem.
Recommendation letters are absolutely crucial.  In my experience they are by far the most important factor: other aspects of the application could hurt your chances even if you get good letters, but those other aspects cannot get you admitted by themselves.  If you can't arrange for enthusiastic letters that the admissions committee will trust, then you have no chance at all of being admitted at a higher-ranked school.  It's possible that a lower-ranked school might take a chance on you, but as I understand it every graduate program cares a lot about letters.
As for math papers, it's unfortunately not hard to write a near-vacuous or unoriginal paper and get it published somewhere obscure, and carefully evaluating a paper can take a lot of time and effort (refereeing is hard).  If you simply list a paper in your application, with no evidence of its quality, then it's unlikely anyone will have the time to investigate carefully.  The important thing for graduate admissions is not the publication per se, but rather the research experience that led to it, and you need a letter of recommendation that talks about this research and vouches for it.  (In fact, having such a letter can be very valuable even if the research did not lead to a published paper.)  This means you need a letter from your supervisor or mentor, or at the very least from someone who has read the paper and knows something about how it came about (for example, someone who can single out your own contribution if you had coauthors).  In principle, if you publish in an especially prestigious journal and without senior coauthors, then the journal's high standards might serve as enough of signal of quality by themselves.  However, this very rarely happens with undergraduate research.
So in short:

Bad grades could hurt you but good grades won't serve as a strong argument for admission.
Recommendation letters are crucial.
Research experience could help you get great letters but is very difficult to judge except through the letters.

However, as I said in the beginning, there are a lot of graduate programs out there, with different approaches to admissions.  If all goes well, you'll get strong letters from math faculty and will be admitted in more or less the usual way.  Otherwise, you may have to find a school that is willing to take a chance (usually because they have trouble attracting strong students with conventional backgrounds).

Math papers matter only to the extent that they are good, and nobody has enough time to read them to find out. — I find the second half of this claim surprising.  If the letters say the work is good, why wouldn't you judge it for yourself?

@JeffE: I'll edit to clarify.  I meant if you simply include in your application a paper published somewhere obscure, without a letter, then it's unlikely anyone will investigate.  In practice, if a trustworthy letter praises the work, then I'm happy to take their word for it.  I would probably look at it if it happens to be in an area I know well, but even a good undergraduate paper may not be a close match for anyone on the faculty.  (Sometimes these papers are pretty specialized, and they are of more value as a research experience than as a significant contribution to the literature.)

@AnonymousMathematician But what if the papers aresh published are published in some good journals, where profesional mathematicians publish their work?

There's a lot of pressure on professionals to publish (or perish), so there are many venues of questionable quality. There are about 600 journals that publish math papers. Of those, a couple dozen are prestigious enough that a singly-authored paper there could substantially improve an application even if no letter writer really understood it. For the top hundred journals, it would be noteworthy but really need a letter to explain. Beyond that, it's almost solely a matter of the letter.

I too sort of disagree with the idea that it's hard to tell whether an undergraduate paper is any good (and I have done admissions in my math department's PhD program for several years).  If I looked at a paper outside of my subject area, it would be hard for me to decide whether a given journal should accept it.  It's much less hard to decide whether it contains serious mathematics, which is what I'm looking for as a committee member.  (On the other hand, if the work is coauthored with a faculty member it's almost impossible to tell to what extent the work was independently done.)

@PeteL.Clark The faculty member only set "the problem ,guided me, and shaped the final paper". This is mentioned in the paper

@AnonymousMathematician You said that "If you simply list a paper in your application, with no evidence of its quality, then it's unlikely anyone will have the time to investigate carefully" .What are good ways of giving evidence about the quality of the papers

It also seems surprising to me from your answers and the other answers that papers are not very important. If papers do not weight much, then what can I do as an engineering student to improve my CV for math graduate schools other than GRE math, letters

The earlier answers make good points...
And I would say, in your situation, most likely the "papers" are of little consequence in admission-or-not, and a 3.5 GPA is fine. No one cares beyond that. Letters matter a great deal when I recommend-or-not admission. What I read first, however, is the personal statement. Do be aware that in many programs there is a dominating impulse to "mechanize" admissions, which obviously has difficulty making use of either letters of recommendation or personal statements. But, still, if you explain your interests, your self-study, this can have a huge, repeat huge, impact on admission chances. I suspect you've not had much contact with math faculty in the course of your self-study, so can't get letters from math faculty. (If this is not correct, so much the better!) Letters from engineering faculty about students' mathematical talent are typically nearly worthless, since there seems to be a general tendency for "engineers" to believe that "mathematics" is "just a tool", and that they've mastered it, etc. Nevermind.
But the point is that you should not expect even glowing letters from engineering faculty to have much impact on admission to math grad school, exactly because the prejudices of many engineers are very familiar to mathematicians.
The subject-test GRE may help your chances, and you must take it, because a low-ish score is vastly better than the cluelessness indicated by having no score at all.
But for a person approach mathematics with genuine enthusiasm, but "belatedly", the personal statement, explaining unapologetically how you came to your present course, is the most important thing. Very few people choose to self-study mathematics... (although quite a few seem to believe that they have special gifts that require no study...!)
Explain yourself in your personal statement. Get letters from the people who think well of you who have the best idea of what professional mathematics entails.
Edit/addition: very literally, it is best to have letters from people who have been to math grad school themselves, preferably at better places, so have an idea of what that entails. Many or most math grad programs have "breadth" requirements apart from the eventual goal of "original research"=thesis. So it's not so much a question of your letter writers' "peer-reviewed publications" so much as their first-hand experience with math grad school. (These days some people who've done PhD's in math do end up in engineering depts, and vice-versa, but this is still unusual.) Thus, a recommendation letter should perhaps literally say something like "From my first-hand experience in math grad school at X, and observations of math grad students at Y and Z, [student] will be a success." That's the kind of thing that leaps out at me when I read these letters. (No, don't have your letter writers send CVs or publication lists.)

Yes. I am certainly not going to take my recommendation letters from my engineering faculty

Letters from engineering faculty about students' mathematical talent are typically nearly worthless — Note to self: In future letters for prospective math grad students, be sure to highlight my own peer-reviewed mathematical research, lest I be dismissed as yet another ignorant engineer.

Admissions committees care what CS theorists have to say.  The problematic recommendations are the ones that are not informative: "At our university, the mathematical methods course is the toughest obstacle to getting a degree in blah engineering.  It requires both multivariate calculus and linear algebra as prerequisites, and the students study advanced topics such as the calculus of variations or WKB theory.  Juniors and seniors struggle with this course, but Student X got an A as a sophomore.  This outstanding performance makes him a top candidate for any graduate program in mathematics."

That said, I think it's a generally a good rule if making a recommendation in an area that's not your field of expertise to give some indication of your own experience.  The important question for all letters writers is what knowledge do you have about what qualities a student needs to get through graduate school in mathematics.  If you're a faculty member at a school with a good graduate program, you might get a pass on this, but otherwise you should discuss what your basis of making judgements is.

3,1,2 .
And high GRE (subject) score may help.The content and level of your papers is crucial.
And your goal will determine your chance.By the way ,this math-gre website lists many applicant profiles and admission results.
Definitely worth a look..

Care to elaborate?


text:
How to review a paper for originality?
Originality with timeliness is among the most important criteria for a paper to get published.
Many a times when we are reviewing a paper, we are faced with dilemma as to how much of it is original, how much of it is based on another paper, and how much of it is just repetition in a slightly different context. Also, at times papers cater to interdisciplinary and cross-area and it may seem that the idea is original.

What preparation does the reviewer need to have in order to review a paper justly?
How do you judge the originality of a paper?

One tip which you may find useful: I have found that often, the closest existing work to the reviewed manuscript is the authors' previous work. So by reading the authors' previous work you can see whether they have made a large advancement or a small increment.

I've reviewed more than 50 papers, and my preparation to review them has varied widely.  At least a few of them have drawn heavily on papers I've written.  Generally, these are extending my results.  Typically, I ask myself: What does this paper add? Is it something I would have thought of easily or not?  If yes, why didn't I include it in my paper?
In contrast, I've also reviewed some papers that I was not well prepared for.  They were in my general field, but in a subarea that I hadn't worked in.  These papers took a lot more work. (Up to 10x as long for me to review as a paper in an area where I'm very familiar.)  For papers in an area that's new to me, I often have to look up (and skim) at least a few of the references from the introduction to judge whether the paper is original.  Originality has at least two very different levels.  The easier one to achieve is: (1) this result is new, and doesn't follow simply from anything previous.  The much harder one is, (2) this technique is fundamentally new and produces interesting results.  If the results are interesting, most journals are happy to publish articles of type (1).  Articles of type (2) are much rarer, and can potentially open entire new fields.
tl;dnr:

Preparation: you need to either know the subarea well or be willing to read a lot to learn about it.
Originality: What papers does it draw on? How likely is it that a reader of those would be able to write this paper?  Answering this question may require you to read a lot of background.

Why would you agree to review papers in an area new to you?

First, let me clarify that it was usually a subarea that I had not done research in, although I had often heard a lecture on something related before.  Typically I said yes because I either wanted to learn more about that area or the work of that specific author, or because I wanted to get experience refereeing for that particular journal (similar to the reasons I would opt to teach a new class in an area I didn't know that well yet).

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How to respond to a perplexing review?
I've received a perplexing peer-review to a submitted paper of mine. The editor asks for major revisions, and sent us two reviews. The first one is serious and raises good points: we'll work, amend the manuscript and send a detailed reply to the editor.
The second reviewer, however, has a 3 (minor) weird questions, and his fourth is:

The authors claimed that “[some sentence taken from the abstract]”. Please give more detailed explanations

where the sentence is actually a summary of our two-page “Results and discussion” section, i.e. the core of the paper.
I'm concerned that the second reviewer has actually not really read the full paper [1], and wonder what the best option to deal with it. I've come with the following ideas:

In the response to the editor, respond to this request by simply saying “This claim is backed up and discussed at length in section IV”.
Do not respond, but write to the editor saying I am concerned about whether the reviewer actually read the paper at all.
Try to do some editing and write an evasive response, like “We have edited the manuscript to improve the clarity of the discussion on this point”.

I want to take option #1, because I think the editor will read between the lines. I'd hate to badmouth the reviewer (option #2), or risk deteriorating the manuscript by silly editing (#3).
What's your take on this? Do you have advice or suggestions on how to act in this situation?

[1] I must say here that I started by doubting the clarity of our paper, first. Trying not to be overly defensive of my work! But after asking a friend a second opinion on it, he agrees with me that the review seems shoddy.

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5865/what-to-do-if-reviewers-reject-a-paper-without-understanding-the-content

Maybe the reviewer did not read the paper properly. It may be even likely. But never, ever, surmise. You do not know. Option 2 is taboo; it's the job of the editor to come to that conclusion. Option 1 or 3 are fine.

Combine 1 and 3? "This claim is discussed at length in Section 4, we have adjusted the wording in Section 4.1 to make the presentation more clear."

Combine 1 and 3? "This claim is discussed at length in Section 4, we have adjusted the wording in Section 4.1 to make the presentation more clear."

In my view:
Option 1 is fine. You are not required to do what a reviewer asks - if you choose not to do so you just need to explain why.
Option 2 is not a good idea. You are required to respond to every comment made by a reviewer, regardless if you agree or disagree.
Option 3 is also fine. This may be the safest bet - I am guessing you could probably even add a single sentence and the reviewer will almost certainly say its fine.
Probably both 1 and 3 are ok and will get you past this reviewer. You can also go for a combined strategy like: "We feel this claim is backed up and discussed at length in section IV. Nevertheless, we have edited the manuscript to improve the clarity of the discussion on this point."

The first thing to do, which I understand you have done, is to check all comments to see whether or not something is unclear or can be misunderstood. Your experience with the second reviewers matches what I see as an editor, that (very) short reviews often are sub-par, and essentially of very little use (applies to both positive and negative reviews). So this is unfortunately not unique.
What I think you should do is the following. Follow up the first reviewer's comments as carefully as you see fit. When you turn to the comments of the second author, try to treat them seriously as well. If you are lucky, maybe something you fixed in response to reviewer 1 will cover Reviewer 2's comments. If not, you need to try to respond to the comments even if you think they are pointless. Failing to respond, or trying to brush them off (regardless of how much you would like to do so), should be avoided. The example you gave should be possible to counter by simply saying that the abstract is not the place to expand on any discussion, since a detailed discussion is provided in the paper proper. Although this may seem unnecessary, you do not know how the editor will interpret the comments and your reply, so try to be clear and stay neutral.

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

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


text:
Individual presentation for a PhD application
A friend of mine applied to a PhD program and luckily they called her for a presentation. They said that the presentation should be a maximum of 10 minutes long and should consist of three slides. These slides should include past experience and research interests, they say.
We are trying to prepare an optimal presentation. We think of,
(1) Presenting a brief CV, including academic background, education etc.
(2) Past research experience, especially during the MSc thesis,
(3) Work experience.
In addition to research experience, we want to emphasize the teaching experience and the experience gained from the courses taken.
However the problem is that research experience and work experience significantly overlap with each other and we are concerned about not using slides optimally.
We would like to hear advice from you about this type of presentations. Or if you know any sources on the web that are specifically for these type of situations, we would be very happy to hear them.
Note that the presentation should be ten minutes long with three slides and should focus on interests & past experience of the individual.

I'm confused.  Wasn't everything they ask for already included in your friend's original application?  If so, the precise content is probably not as important as the clarity of presentation.

I have not been in this situation so my answer below may be at odds. I was required to have a chat with a potential supervisor and then lodge a detailed application. The fact that the supervisor endorsed my topic was a sure indication of acceptance by the university.
It appears that you are being over cautious (and I can understand why - you only get one shot at this!). My advice is to follow the simple rule of presentation i.e. keep it clear, concise and relevant.
So I would suggest the following for your three slides:

Slide 1 - Tell them what you want to do and how you will do it (i.e. topic and methods)
Slide 2 - Tell them why you want to do it (i.e. gap in knowledge you are addressing)
Slide 3 - Tell them how qualified you are to complete it (i.e. your skills and experience)

The contents and presentation skills go hand in hand, so prepare thoroughly. Unless you have a good reason, don't be too defensive of your approach. Give the impression that you are ready.

I also have not been in this situation, but my advice would be to focus on the work done during the MSc--what was the thesis on, why was it interesting, how would you extend it (to research, if it was not a research-based thesis; or to further experiments/work if it involved a significant research component already).  If the work experience was related either to what the MSc was on, or to what the PhD will be on, go into that also; otherwise just mention it in passing.
The admissions committee already has all the information they need from the CV about what your friend's background is.  What they don't know is how she can think about a research project, and how she comes across in person (in a formal setting like a brief talk).  The latter will happen regardless of the choice of topic, so the former is, in my opinion, what to aim for.
Also, your friend should make sure that the presentation is tailored to the appropriate level for the people present!  A bit of high-level why-is-this-important is good regardless of level, but if it's a very focused program in the same topic, she should go into more depth than if it's a broad one (e.g. computational neuroscience vs. biology).
Anyway, if I were listening to such a presentation, I would be trying to figure out: is she interested in research?  Does she understand it?  Is she enthusiastic about it?  And, since the near-universal advice is "show, don't tell", I'd be looking not for her to say that she does/is any of these things, but for it to be implicit in the presentation.
Finally, I'm assuming she'll be talking one-on-one with a number of people also.  That's probably more important!  Stressing overly much about the presentation to the point of e.g. getting inadequate sleep is almost surely the wrong way to go.


text:
Why is 3.0 GPA used as cut-off for job offers, etc.?
My GPA is 2.97 and I am a junior in University. My resume is pretty strong, having around 2 years experience in the industry as a software engineer. I also include work samples with my resume, including small games and web apps. Recently I have been applying to several co-op jobs. In a few of them, I have been contacted by the employer and asked "Do you have a 3.0 GPA?". I respond honestly and say "no". Many of them seem to completely decline based on this alone, despite everything else I have on my resume.
This always seemed odd to me, because in and of itself, this focus on grade-point average influences poor academic behavior. It influences students to avoid taking anything challenging because the risk is too high. Also, many students have the advantage of being full-time students, whereas people like me work full-time while in school.
So why do companies base so much on GPA? And why is the 3.0 cut-off so strictly enforced?

My guess: one needs a simple filter to reduce the initially huge number of applicants before you can pay more attention to the each application.

This question appears to be off-topic because it is about undergraduate grades in the workplace

While 2.97 is not 3.00, I am pretty sure it can reasonably be called 3.0.

I'd disagree with closing this as workplace-only. The same criteria can also be used in summer enrichment programs (like REU's).

I think this question is basically asking what is the difference between GPA 3.0 and 2.9 (or 2.97)? Voted to reopen.

“why do companies base so much on GPA? — And why is the 3.0 cut-off so strictly enforced?” — Because it is practical! As any numerical indicator, it allows one to make decisions very fast. Thus, it is not used the main decision factor, but simply to weed out a large fraction of applications, thus reducing the amount of work required by individual examination of the remaining applicants' files.
Does it mean that some exceptional applicants, with poor GPA grades, are left out? Yes. Is it understandable from the company's point of view? Yes, also: you have to compare the amount of work it would require to give each and every application a thorough review (huge) to the risk of loosing a potential top-notch-collaborator-who-had-a-poor-GPA.

Why 3.0? — I'm not sure there's any good reason for that, and it would probably depend on the company/program. But 3.0 is a nice round number, easy to remember, and it falls in a convenient place in the statistical distribution: if you set the limit to 2.5, your threshold does not filter out enough applications; if you set it to 3.5, you're at risk of loosing to many good applicants (making you rely too much on this simple numerical indicator).

How to combat it, if your GPA is lower than 3.0? — Rounding is one trick you might try (2.97 is 3.0, if two significant digits). More promising, though, are getting very strong recommandations, if possible from inside the company. Whatever the announced requirements are, there usually are ways to get your application file into the right pile, if you can get someone to speak for you.

Networking is the key here.  If you are afraid of being on the first-round chopping block, try to find clever ways to create relationships with people in the place you are applying to.  Sometimes you can save yourself from being roasted just by having someone recognize your name on a piece of paper.


text:
What would be the best way to convince a professor to waive late submission penalties?
I am a grad level student and I am completing my last course this semester.
The professor is reducing our grade by 20%/day if we submit our assignment late.
It is a lot. For example, my grade is 18/20 and he reduced it by 4 because I submitted it a day late. My total GPA is A+. It is a significant amount of grade that he is taking off. This will ruin my grade.
I understand that a late submission is not good. Having said that, I have always been trying my best to submit them on time. His assignments were more difficult than what he was teaching us during lectures and I always need to study extra books and material to solve problems.
I was thinking of sending an email and asking for him to waive the penalties. Especially now due to COVID it is somehow cruel to enforce these penalties.
What would be the best way to convince a professor to waive late submission penalties?
Reason for late submission: Due to my research internship, I have been working part-time in a company in another city (not the city that the university is located). So it was pretty hard for me to keep up with the deadline. Before COVID, I had to even commute in between cities to attend classes and that drained me.
Edited: I wrote this letter, please feel free to edit or add more details.

Dear zyx,
     I am writing regarding the late-submission penalties.
Due to my research internship and displacement, It was pretty hard for me to keep up with the deadlines.
During this time I had to commute in between cities and I had only slid to follow up the course and solve assignments that I can save them for submitting my assignments earlier.
Not accessing the in-person classes made me spend hours studying other references to solve my assignments.
So I was wondering if you could please waive late submission penalties?
Best regards,
XYZ

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

"...I had only slid to follow up the course and solve assignments that I can save them for submitting my assignments earlier."  The meaning of this particular statement isn't very clear, so you would want to rewrite it.

Professors will say no by default to all such requests, but a lot of the time they secretly want to say yes, so you need to help them help you by providing all the relevant context, being logical and reasonable, and generally convince them that you are worthy of their attention and understanding.
Here is my attempt at a draft email.

Dear Professor xyz,
my name is ZYX, I’m a student in your Programming for Programmers class. I submitted the first class project one day late on February 17 and as a result you imposed a 20% late submission penalty, which reduced my project grade from 18/20 to 14/20.
I know that this penalty is in the course policies and accept that there is a good reason for such penalties and that you have the right to decide such things. But I wonder if you considered that such a high penalty may be unreasonably harsh? I am an excellent student and have worked very hard to maintain an overall GPA of A+ in the program. Because of the penalty it seems almost certain that my final grade for the class will end up lower than what my performance would merit without the penalty, which in turn would lower my overall GPA and future academic and career chances. The consequences seem disproportionate relative to the one time mistake of submitting an assignment late by just one day.
I therefore want to ask respectfully if you might consider waiving or at least reducing the penalty for this late submission.
I do sincerely apologize for the late submission, and for not contacting you in advance of the deadline to request an extension (something that in hindsight I obviously should have done when I realized I was going to be late). Normally I am very good at keeping up with my workload, but back in February, because of a research internship I was doing at [name of company], which required me to commute back and forth between [name of city 1] and [name of city 2] and took up a lot of my time and energy, my commitments ended up piling up in an unexpected way, which caused me to fall a little behind and miss the deadline. I nonetheless worked diligently to catch up and ended up managing to submit what I think you’ll agree is a high quality project the next day.
Thanks for your consideration. I hope you understand my anxiety and do not think less of me for making this request. In this difficult period when students like me are facing an uncertain job market and other unusual difficulties related to the COVID-19 crisis, we could use a bit of leniency.
Regards,
ZYX

That might even convince me, old curmudgeon that I am. ;-)

This line jarred for me "But I wonder if you considered that such a high penalty may be unreasonably harsh?" - It seems a bit confrontational. Perhaps something like "I was hoping there might be some scope for leeway"

@Valorum yes, it’s clear that I’ve forgotten how to speak like a true grad student.

I wonder if mentioning that this will bring down OP's GPA would be a plus. Some professors might stop reading there and assume OP cares more about grades than learning and dismiss the request.

@TheHagen well, I’m a professor and I think OP’s concern about their GPA is not only reasonable but makes the case for the request stronger. Yes, some professors (myself included) may wish that students didn’t care about grades as much as they do. But how can we complain about this when we are part of a system that trains students to care that strongly, using an elaborate array of carefully engineered sticks and carrots (including the late homework submission penalty OP is asking about)? A professor who dismisses the request on those grounds would be a hypocrite and completely unreasonable.

@Buffy Thanks. I’m beginning to suspect you may not be as curmudgeonly as you claim to be...

@Valorum on a more serious note than my earlier reply: could it be there’s something going on here involving a difference between UK and US norms of politeness/etiquette? I’ve read the sentence you pointed out over and over and still fail to see anything confrontational about it - it strikes me as quite submissive in fact. Reminds me that I once managed to seriously offend a family of friends in London who invited me over for dinner, despite having the impression that I was behaving like a perfect gentleman.

@DanRomik - To me if feels like you're questioning his judgement. "Hey, don't you think you're being capricious and stupid?"

@Valorum ok, thanks. I accept that some people will read it this way, but I just don’t see it myself, so as I said before, my guess is this is related to a difference in cultural/linguistic norms between British and American English.

@DanRomik - Also, if you ask someone a question right at the top of your letter, there's a real possibility that you're gonna get an answer you don't like, before they've read the justification below.

This wouldn't move me much. However if there was a hint of asking whether there is a possibility of doing an extra assignment or doing something more in order to regain the lost score, I'd be more inclined to bend the rules. I mean, If I was the student, I'd try to argue if I could do another assignment to get the score. If the professor was to waive completely he'd be doing wrong to all the other students. But letting a student have a do-over upon request would be within tolerable moral limits, IMHO.

"Professors will say no by default to all such requests." Not all professors will. Especially not in the middle of a global pandemic. Of course it is true though that we generally tend to stick our policies pretty solidly.

@StianYttervik OTOH, when a student wants to do extra work to improve their grade that's an automatic no from me. You had too much on your plate to get the assignment in on time, and now you want me to take the time to create and grade a whole new assignment so you can have more on your plate?

I agree with @TheHagen.  I was always annoyed by "grade-grubbers" who make the case that they need a better grade based on the reasoning that... they want a better grade.  Frankly, I would be influenced in this situation by whether I knew the student and liked the student.  If this is a student who has asked good questions in class, visited me in my office hours, etc., I would be inclined to assume their intentions were good and to grant them an extension or waiver.  If the first time I've ever met the student is two days after the deadline and they're making an excuse, I would tend to reject.

@workerjoe.  I'd see a difference between a student arguing their work was worth a higher grade and OP who is asking for a penalty reduction against work that was graded as good, but reduced due to late submission

A minor nitpick on my name is ZYX, I’m a student in your Programming for Programmers class—I hope the student is already acquainted with the professor and doesn't need to introduce themself at the end of the semester (unless the class is quite large).  Also, the student's name is in the email header and at the bottom of the message; there's no reason to repeat it here.

I wouldn't say "I wonder if you considered that such a high penalty may be unreasonably harsh?", not because it's confrontational exactly, but because it invites the professor to think "yes, I have considered that, and decided that the penalty is reasonable and necessary," and then skim through the rest without really reading it.

@kathy there is no "too much on the plate". There is only time and how you prioritize to use it. If the student messed up and was willing to do the work to make up for it, I'd at least consider letting them have a do over. What I wouldn't do was grade them differently based on just a sad story and an apology.

@Dan Romik, I had another course this semester as well, the prof was stubborn and was asking a letter from dean regarding my research movement. (He was trying to fail me as I was not able to attend some sessions) So I had to contact dean and my advisor to provide him a letter showing that I am really out of city and it is hard for me to attend classes. Even  dean talked to him to convince him and at the end my prof gave him a letter. Do you think mentioning that letter or getting a letter from my advisor would help?

I'm going to guess that you won't be able to convince them, no matter what you say. I think the rule that they imposed is very strict, but not unreasonable. They may have done so as a goad to get you to work early and often on assignments, rather than to let things go to the last moment. They may have done it simply to aid their own workflow in grading and giving feedback.
You can ask, and give the reasons. State them honestly. You can ask for an exception. You'd be more likely to get a one time exception than a general change in policy. But the prof would be doing you a favor in that case and you'd have to recognize it as such.
But, you made your own decisions to take on a workload that may have been to heavy for the conditions. Since those decisions were yours to make, it isn't the responsibility of others, including this prof, to get you out of the consequences.

I was once in a similar situation and wound up needing to drop a course to get back to a more reasonable work load. It required a favor from the dean who was, fortunately, inclined to grant it.

it was only a day late,

@programmer Feels to me that the policy is pretty explicitly designed to cover cases that are "only a day late" - since you were only a day late you get -20%, if you were three days late you would get -60% off. I'm not saying it's a particularly lenient policy, but I feel "it was only a day" will not impress this specific professor much.

I'm going to go against the flow here and say it's likely not worth drafting a letter to your professor asking for a reduced penalty:

However you phrase it, it easily comes across as "needy" to me and so may negatively impact the professor's opinion of you;
Your circumstances aren't exceptional (essentially boiling down to "I was busy so didn't have enough time");
20% per day actually seems rather lenient to me (we had a strict 0% policy for any late submission without an exceptional excuse.)

I've received a few requests like this from students in the past - the answer was almost always "no", and for better or worse, it made them seem desperate and/or lazy. (Of course, exceptions for situations such as "my father passed", "I was admitted to hospital", etc.)
Where you might receive more leeway is if you contact the professor well in advance of the deadline, demonstrate that you're working on the problem, say that you'll struggle to finish in time and ask if there's anything that can be done. This puts across the impression of "I'm trying but really struggling, what should I do?" rather than "I didn't work hard enough and submitted late, could you maybe get rid of that penalty pretty please?" - and most reasonable professors would want to help you out in the first situation.

You seem to miss the point that this professor is not you. Many profs accept the requests (especially since Covid is an exceptional suggestion) and you do not really point out why it could be a disadvantage to write such a letter. From your answer, it seems like the only thing lost when writing a letter is a small amount of time. Also, the one who judges if the circumstances are exceptional is the prof, not we  on the Internet (as we do not have enough information on the situation).

You need to get out in front of things. Acceptable reasons for a waiving of late penalties after the fact are usually limited to personal illness, serious illness or death in the family, or some other serious unexpected incident.
Other work commitments, commuting, picking up children from school, time for studying, etc. are expected situations for students. It is completely unreasonable to ask after the fact for a waiver of your late penalties for any of these reasons. You haven't failed your assignment, so let this 20% penalty teach you about your own personal capacities.
Now asking before the assignment is due is another matter. If you are having trouble keeping up, especially with unprecedented events like the COVID-19 pandemic, many schools will have rules allowing for extensions. So get in front of this: consider all of your subjects and their assessments. If there are any that are bunched together (for example if you have a week with 3 major things due in it) then it's quite plausible that you can get an extension for one or more. You should ask both your lecturers and your school's dean of studies/student department/etc, so that they can coordinate extensions between different subjects. Or you may be able to withdraw from a subject without academic penalty. But there's no guarantee that flexibility will be granted to you. Your problems aren't unexpected.

I think you have a unique "opportunity" with the pandemic: True reason for being late or not, it is an extraordinary situation. Your professor may feel they can make an exception this semester without violating sacred principles.
One thing which would convince me was if the whole class/course would write a polite request that late penalties were suspended under these extraordinary circumstances. I don't know how  many students are in your course, and if anybody else was late. But I would try to contact everybody (including punctual submitters!) and write a common letter detailing the problems which you all faced and stating that you all scrambled, and some simply had it easier with setting up home office, commuting etc.
Including everybody would make it more palatable to the professor because they might conceive a waiver as an unjust advantage of those who could not manage their time well. If everybody is OK with that it's easier to relax their principles just once under these extraordinary circumstances.

Your professor has good reasons for their late submission penalties.
Employment demands timely delivery, even when the work is tough. Lateness has real consequences, projects and relationships can be ruined. Sometimes negotiation is possibly; other times it is not.
Exploiting current events for personal gain may pay off, but not without cost. Other avenues should be sought, overtime considered.
An unanticipated or uncommon personal situation might merit delayed delivery. For instance, a prestigious, honourable activity on-top of a usual workload.
A combination of current events and a personal situation might also merit delay.
In the words of George Davis, Tell It Like It Is.

@programmer Please read How should I phrase an important question that I need to ask a professor?

I think the appeal to academic policy as preparation for employment is particularly weak here. In many careers, a delay in a deliverable will be noticed or even anticipated long before the deadline, which can be shifted to accomodate, as deadlines are rarely as immutable as academia presents them to be. Let alone the simple fact that employment rarely involves the requirement to find both energy and free time at home to complete significant amounts of work, as most work is done during dedicated paid time. While it is a reason for late submission penalties, I wouldn't call it a good reason.

@Klaycon Spot on! I'd fully anticipated your comment. That's why I wrote: projects and relationships can be ruined and that sometimes negotiation is possibly; other times it is not. As for employment rarely involves the requirement to find both energy and free time at home to complete significant amounts of work, that really depends on your job. Many will strongly disagree with you. Similarly for dedicated paid time, many work well beyond contracted hours.

@user2768: Please note that in many couuntries,working beyond contracted hours is against the law and not something people should be taught as a good thing.

@user111388 I didn't suggest breaking the law. Regardless, contracted hours may be unbounded for practical purposes. Specifically for academia: I've never known a academic to record nor cap their hours.

It may be that the professor has no discretion to waive the late penalty.  At my institution we have an "extenuating circumstances" panel that does have the discretion to waive late penalties if the student can give reasonable evidence of an "extenuating circumstances" that are beyond their control or ability to foresee (such as health problems) that adequately explains the late submission.  There are good reasons for this, such as to ensure consistency and fairness, but also students may have deeply personal circumstances that they would not want to be shared more widely than absolutely necessary.  Having a small panel that evaluates requests (in this case for a retrospective extension) limits the number of people that need to know about such circumstances, which may make students less reticent to apply.
So don't contact the professor until you have investigated the regulations and found out how these things are handled at your institution.

The penalty is set for some good reason, or at least the professor who set it must think so. However, the penalty is reasonable because of some assumptions work, and those assumptions are likely to work for all students, because if they weren't, the professor would have changed the deadline for all students after some of them asked in time.
Therefore, if you are going to request a change for you and not for the other students, you need to explain why the assumptions on which the penalty is based don't hold for you, and just telling that you are a good student is not going to do the word.
Furthermore, you are asking for an extension when the deadline has already passed. Then, in addition to give a good reason you need to explain why that reason was unforeseeable.
And last but not least, such a hard penalty seems a reaction with the professor not wanting students being late with excuses, probably as a reaction to past experiences. That means that the excuse needs to be very good and very well documented.
And Covid-19 alone doesn't seem to be a good excuse, but documented days of hospitalisation may be, or being unexpectedly confined without a computer or a pencil too.

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


text:
Getting a scientific article published with no qualifications to any scientific journal?
I hope I have found the right website for my query. Would it be possible to get a psychological experiment that you carried out published to any journal, despite the fact that you are:

Only 17 (nearly 18) years old
Have no degree or qualification

I've got some really great ideas for psychological experiments that I haven't been able to find them done yet. I really just want to do science and get recognised for it. I was thinking Google Science fair, but that has ended. I'm just doing this for self-pursuit and interest. I am hoping exposure to a scientific audience can lead me to my future career path.

For experimental psychology (and other life/social sciences) you also have to be aware that many journals require some declaration that your experiments are conducted ethically. (See e.g. the "Ethical Principles" section of the Journal of Experimental Psychology.) Things like "informed consent" can be tricky for a first timer, and I would really recommend finding a research psychologist to supervise you.

"Can a hypothetical, extremely gifted and improbably well-informed student publish?" is a valid question. However, it's worth reflecting on how realistic this is. Science is not just about making an experiment that sounds clever. What long standing gaps in research does your experiment address? What previous research has been done? How is yours superior to it? Did you have appropriate controls and statistical analysis? What are the theoretical and practical implications of your results? I am a little skeptical that a 17 year old could really answer these (though it's certainly not impossible).

There are two different types of "no qualifications":

A person may be "unqualified" because they don't have the usual pieces of paper
A person may be "unqualified" because they are not familiar with the standards and practices of the field.

Don't worry about the first one.  Worry about the second one.  For example, one of the other comments raised the issue of getting human subject experiments approved.  Likewise, there are lots of subtle challenges in experimental design that have to be dealt with in order to  getting a valid psychological result.  But high school students and undergraduates do real scientific work all the time.  Consider, for example, the iGEM genetic engineering competition: students from around the world, both high school and undergraduate, get right out to the bleeding edge of science, and some of their work goes on to be published.  Or consider the Hackerspace/DIY movement, which is bubbling over with innovation and certainly knows no age barriers.
Now, what most of those folks have, and what it sounds like you don't currently, is mentors who know the ropes.   A good mentor might or might not be "qualified" in the sense of pieces of paper, but should have a good sense of the scientific method, and at least some ideas of who else to get involved if you start thinking you've got a unique result and want to figure out how to get from awesome science on the internet to a formal publication.
Don't worry about the uniqueness or publication part of it too much.  First, find some good peers and a mentor if you can, and just start doing some science.  Then see if you actually enjoy the thrill of the knowledge chase enough to overcome the frustrations of experiments that don't work and people who point out the problems in the ideas you have come to love.  If you fall in love, not just with the idea of science, but with the process, then as time goes by you can sort out which of the many science-related career paths ends up being a good one for you to pursue.
Maybe you'll end up published before you turn 20, and maybe you won't.  If that makes a big difference to you, then you're in it for the wrong reasons.

Good answer, and I also want to emphasize the point of approaching researchers working in the field as collaborators and mentors. They can help you with an overview of the field, they know the litterature, and will be able to spot trivial mistakes and omissions, which could take you a long time to discover.

Yes, it's possible if uncommon. I did it, learned a ton, and had a blast. The byline in the journal just unceremoniously lists my affiliation as my high school. It's actually pretty funny. But the others' answers are spot-on; you have to put in a lot of background reading in the field. This is much easier when you have a mentor in the field to guide you, but I didn't have one. If you can, talk to someone with a good brain for research and study design even if they're not in psychology, and ask for their help with the idiosyncrasies of preparing a manuscript for submission.
Don't have wild expectations, but go for it. It's pretty damn fun to do independent research. And psychology is not a bad choice: the literature is accessible to a layperson, and if you're clever, you can do a psych study on a shoestring.
Good luck!

A note on collaboration. Many young researchers are scared of collaborative research because the other person will "steal their ideas" or "take some of the credit". Do not worry about this: it is much better to publish a good paper with a co-author than a mediocre paper without.

@DavidRicherby, yes!

Ignore the doubters.
Do the goddamn experiments and keep a METICULOUS log of your activity, practice, procedures etc.  Videos, transcripts, audios, pictures, notes, EVERYTHING.
Most of the greatest minds in our history all came from little to no educational background, (or completely different fields)
People forget that science isn't about a degree, it's about curiosity.
Go do it my man.
It's true, it might be easier if you can have a patron or mentor but don't let that stop you from starting.  You can do both at the same time.  Send a respectful letter or phone the Professor and say something along the lines of:
"Hi, My names John, I'm doing some cool research about xyz, I thought you'd be intereted because
I'm running my xth wave of experiments (never say it's your first or second) at the moments and it's due to finish on the xth.
I'm telling you this because it would be great to have another perspective/opinion/insight about the results.  Already there are some amazing trends beginning to show."
Be confident and display certainty in your communications.
Don't get too caught up in the pomposity of academia.  Respect it, but don't aspire to it, keep things simple man.
FYI. I read and use various reports, and papers all the time in my occupation, and most of it could be said with about 60% less verbage.  It's disgraceful that the most 'educated' minds require so many words, they are nearly as bad as lawyers, (which use these massive amounts of words to sneak their own interpretation into)
Toasting to your success my friend.

On what basis do you make the statement: "the greatest minds in our history all came from little to no educational background"? I think this is misleading.


text:
What to do with an expository note
Mostly for fun, I've been working on an exposition about some ideas in my area of math (algebraic geometry).  As far as I know there isn't any elementary introduction to this particular topic already out there. It's at an early undergrad level.  I'd like to make it available, but I'm just not sure how best to proceed.
What are my options for disseminating it, and what are the pros/cons of each?  I'm especially interested in what sorts of articles are suitable expository journals, vs what usually lands on a math blog.  (I could also just put it on my site, but I hope someone and than my own students (and my parents) will actually read it.)
Other relevant info: I'm currently a postdoc at a research-intensive place.  I'd like to be competitive for teaching jobs at good liberal arts colleges when I'm done in a couple years -- if any of these options would help with that, it's a point in favor.

You should at least post it on your website, and you could potentially get a lot of search engine traffic.  I've found lots of expository notes that way.  It also sounds like the arXiv may be appropriate, if you think it'll be useful for grad students and other researchers.

Ah, yes, that's a good point.  But I'm hoping for somewhere else too.  It's a topic that random undergrads wouldn't be googling; the people searching for the keywords will probably already know more than it contains.  It's pitched at a very low level, so I will probably skip the arxiv -- there are better ways for grad students to learn the area.

What about a place like the Monthly or College Math Journal?  (Hopefully your exposition is not 50 pages.)

Seconding @Kimball's recommendation, the "Monthly" (for all its problems...) is seen by undergrads, and also "College M.J.". Small consolation, but, indeed, it's hard to reach people who don't know the keyword to "google-upon". Conceivably, your enveloping HTML page could include more-naive keywords, or even nearly-hype-ish keywords, hubris-acknowledged, that would give g-hits.

@paulgarrett Can you please convert this into an answer so that I can vote for it?

I doubt the Monthly is the place for it.  If you decide to publish, see THIS mathoverflow question.

(Upon jakebeal's request:)
Seconding @Kimball's recommendation, the "Monthly" (for all its problems...) is seen by undergrads, and also "College M.J.". Small consolation, but, indeed, it's hard to reach people who don't know the keyword to "google-upon". Conceivably, your enveloping HTML page could include more-naive keywords, or even nearly-hype-ish keywords, hubris-acknowledged, that would give g-hits.


text:
Reports arising from math workshops
I've attended a few workshops consisting of some talks, and then maybe 10-15 hours of "group work" over the course of a week.  At one, my group more or less solved the question we set out to answer, which was mildly interesting but not particularly ambitious.  (Essentially, it was a computation a few of us had wondered about over coffee at previous conferences.)
The organizers are hoping the groups will write up and post (arxiv+journal?) reports on the outcomes of the work.  My impression is that most people in the group were on board.  It's possible to imagine a continuing project in this direction, but I think everyone has better things to do.
In any case, we do have something to write up, and the result is even mildly amusing.  But if I'd worked it all out myself, I certainly wouldn't arXiv it or submit anywhere.  I'm faced with the possibility of being on a slightly embarrassing, very-many-author paper.
1) is there any polite way to opt to keep my name off of it? (the others are mostly more senior, but I can't really claim I didn't contribute)
2) if this thing does see the light of day, would it be acceptable to omit it from my CV, or list it in some different section?
My perspective is that of a postdoc who will be on the market a couple years from now.  How are these sorts of papers viewed by hiring committees? (My impression is that they are not uncommon these days.)

A tangential comment about "The organizers are hoping ...." In many cases, this hope is related to the prospect of funding for future conferences; the prospects can improve if there is tangible evidence that the workshop produced some worthwhile work. So, if I were in your situation, I'd avoid doing anything that could impede the creation and even the publication of such evidence.

From my point of view (as someone whose eyes are still tired after reading 180 application packets...), having this on your CV would not be a negative thing.  It should of course be on a separate list from your peer reviewed journal publications along with other technical reports, conference proceedings papers, etc.
The positive aspect of this is that it shows that you worked collaboratively with other people at the workshop.  This is a particularly valuable thing for an applied mathematics faculty member, since our department (and our dean and VP for research) want to see faculty in applied mathematics who collaborate with other mathematicians and more importantly collaborate with scientists and engineers on inter- (or trans-) disciplinary research.
In short, don't try to avoid being listed as a coauthor, do list this on your CV in a section separate from your peer reviewed journal articles and don't worry about it hurting your chances of getting a job.

Thanks!  But what if it would end up being peer-reviewed, e.g. published in a low-to-medium quality journal? Is it still OK to list it separately? (I don't mean a you-got-scammed level journal, just one I would normally not submit to.)

Taking this kind of report and turning it into a journal publication is something that might or might not happen after the meeting, but you'd be under no obligation to be a coauthor on such a paper unless you agreed to.  I think that in most cases, a publication in a lesser ranked but still legitimate journal wouldn't be at all harmful.

At least think about the possibility that the following may be true:

Your greatest problem is your embarrassment about being associated with work that is nontrivial and somewhat interesting, but not very ambitious.

I can't speak for other academics, but this ailment afflicts many (most?) mathematicians.  Rota famously quipped that the worth of a mathematician is taken by evaluating their worst paper and dividing by their total number of papers.  So it would be best if you wrote one paper (or one paper which anyone ever saw) which, say, resolves singularities in characteristic zero, or proves the independence of Cantor's continuum hypothesis, or....
Look, you worked for 10-15 hours alongside of other people and you proved something.  Rationally speaking, what is the argument against writing it down, trying to get it published, and including your name on it?  I don't see it, really.  Isn't it more professional to record what you spent time working on?  It would be different if you wanted to push the matter further, but it sounds like you don't.
Well, thanks for listening.  Let me now directly address your questions.

1) Is there any polite way to opt to keep my name off of it?

I think that if you just said, "Sorry folks, I just don't really feel comfortable having my name on the paper" that would be the end of that and no one would view you as being impolite.  It does have the possibility of inspiring others to do the same, and at the end maybe the thing doesn't get formally written up, but that's still not really impolite unless there is some author who really wants and needs it to get written up, which doesn't sound like it's the case.  Nevertheless one can ask whether it is really ethical not to take credit for your own work.

2) If this thing does see the light of day, would it be acceptable to omit it from my CV, or list it in some different section?

It depends what happens to it.  If it doesn't get published, then certainly it should go in a different section of your CV, and if you don't want to include unpublished papers on your CV then that's your right.  If it gets published, then in my opinion you are ethically obligated to include it on your CV.

How are these sorts of papers viewed by hiring committees? (My impression is that they are not uncommon these days.)

That's a great question (the best question, I think).  This kind of paper is increasingly common, and hiring committees have the task of what to make of it.  I want to say though that certainly they do not in themselves make a negative impression.  The problem is if too many of your papers are so-multiauthored (or multiauthored with the same senior people well known for their expertise in the area) that it just isn't clear that your name needed to be on them.  But that problem is fundamentally a problem with your other publication record.
It sounds like you are afraid that in publishing such a paper and putting it on your CV you are advertising it as being as good as any of your other papers and asking for "full credit" for it.  But you are doing no such thing.  In fact it is the hirer's job to decide how much credit to give you for all of your papers.  If you do not take steps to signal the importance of the paper and your contribution to it, I think most people will see it for exactly what it is: something nontrivial but nonmajor that was done relatively quickly at a conference.  What's wrong with that?  Nothing.
The last thing I will say is that having a few of these papers could help you more than the stereotypical mathematician is willing to admit.  Contrary to what we get told in grad school, when you apply for a job, although (perhaps) some people are evaluating your research with an eye towards its total mathematical contribution and likely future promise, (certainly) other people are counting your beans.  Having enough beans is not a sufficient condition to get hired (or tenured or promoted or...) at a strong institution, but it is probably necessary.  Every once in a while someone who seems really good doesn't get tenure at a good place (I have in mind a relatively recent instance of this at a top ten math department).  What was the problem?  In each case I have seen, their number of beans was on the lighter side.  Make sure you have enough beans, and don't be embarrassed about it.


text:
Respected researchers giving imprecise or misleading explanations in casual conversations
I have attended quite a few large conferences in mathematics where experts from different fields participate. Naturally I talked to some people and asked them a very basic question: what they are working on. In some cases the answers were not very precise and even rather misleading. I had the feeling that these people tried to make an impression that they work in one field while they work in another one.
One of the worst examples of such discussions was as follows. The person said that he works in interplay of random series and quantum fields. I never heard that there is a connection between the two subjects and asked to elaborate.  His explanations were chaotic: he started to explain on random series without any mention of quantum fields. I asked again how it is related to the latter. He said something about quantum field without mention of random series. After a couple more questions he continued to jump between the two subjects without explaining the relation. The funny thing is that after this discussion I found his list of publications and realized that all his publications belong to a third area which has apparently nothing to do with the two above topics. To my greater surprise, this person is actually a respected mathematician from a good math department.

My impression is that the situations as above are not exceptional. Am I wrong? How typical they are? Is there any rational explanation of such a behavior?

My question might be non-appropriate for this site, sorry about that.   Personally I find the situations I have been in quite strange, and I would like to have any comment if it is something typical in academia (at least in mathematics) or not.

Could it be a case of working in a third area on problems motivated/inspired by questions from the other two?

My impression it was not the case.  But even if it was the case, it is misleading to say that he he works on random series/quantum fields: he still works in the third area!

In my experience, this is also really common in applications for grants. Number theory students from my university for example are advised to write about what great applications Number Theory has (in cryptography and physics), even if they do nothing appliciable at all.

This is more rant than question.

Not all connections are easily seen or explained, and sometimes it's just a hunch. See for instance Langland's programme. Assuming that your conversation partner who was not able to explain what he was thinking about is actively trying to mislead is a very unfriendly interpretation.

There is nothing strange about this. Not everyone is good at translating the very technical problems they are working on, without advance preparation, on demand and at a moment’s notice, into a polished speech that a random person they encounter (mathematician or not) will find understandable. I think the correlation between what you observed and the quality of this person’s work is essentially zero.
As for the fact that you found his description “misleading” because his papers suggest he usually works on other topics: well, he may be trying to do new work in an area he hasn’t worked on before. This is often my situation, and my own answer when people ask me what I’m working on (especially if the question is posed in the present tense as in your description) will occasionally have little or nothing to do with anything I’ve published.

This might be possible, but I think I observed not the situations when a person was not ready to give a technical explanation. My question was about his general fields of interests and not on which concrete problem he is trying to solve right now. If he answered that he is working on interactions between field A with a very different field B, I expect he should be able to explain at least some concrete connection between them. And I repeat, I think there is a pattern in such behavior, not just one example I described.

@user111559 well, all I can say is that I don’t see the strangeness in your description of what you experienced. In particular I don’t see any reason why the professor would intentionally mislead you about such an innocuous question and in the way you feel you were misled. People are sometimes self-aggrandizing in contexts where they think it might benefit them, but this doesn’t sound like a situation where that would make sense as an explanation. Only you were there though, so my feedback probably has limited value anyway.

What you get in such situations is the "elevator talk". Some basic suggestion of what the person is "thinking about" that can be "explained" in the time length of an elevator ride. It isn't very well formed. If it were well formed then it would probably be already a publication or one in process and you would get conclusions, not speculations. They are ill-formed thoughts that come prior to the insight necessary to put it together.
Doctoral students are advised to have an elevator talk prepared in advance about their research so that they don't sound so disjointed as the example you give. This is because the people you meet might have some small suggestions to help with those insights. But mostly just so that you don't stutter when asked, casually, what you are working on.
It may also be that in the case you describe the person was talking about his/her long term goals, not something considered to be imminent. That would explain why the published work seems quite different. You are being told "I think there is some relationship here, but don't really see it yet. Looking hard, though." Chaos may be entirely normal at the early stage of a new exploration. If it weren't, math and science wouldn't be as hard as it is.

Part of it is the imperfection of human nature amplified by the imperfections of society. In an ideal world, the answer to the casual question "What are you currently working on?" would be "I'm currently stuck on this particular lemma" followed by the formulation a decent graduate student working in the field would easily understand. Then it would be your turn to channel the conversation into various ways from "What do you want to use it for?" to "What partial cases can you solve?" to "What techniques have you tried and where is the difficulty" to... depending on how good/bad your erudition, understanding of the subject, technical skills, and the ability to think on the fly of a new topic are.
The imperfection of the human nature is that one often wants to make a good impression more than to convey the information, so one starts with some "big" picture he believes his work fits in and tries to justify the importance of his project and, in the worst case scenarrio, of himself too. It takes some courage to openly declare that no human being and/or project have any particular importance or value in the grand design of this Universe, so we'd better drop all pretense and just try to cooperate in the most efficient ways to achieve something before our time as individuals or species runs up. One often perceives the question "What are you doing?" as "How can you justify your existence?" and tries to answer that instead as if the asking person were a prosecutor on the Last Judgement.
The society imperfections amplify this in several ways. First, there is an objective problem of allocating limited resources to competing individuals. This leads to direct comparisons of really incomparable things and, since no really meaningful comparison can be made (or, rather, too many justifiable comparisons exist with contradicting results), the pseudo-measures like "importance", "general interest", and many others abound. The worst case scenario is that they are measured on scale from 0 to 10 and the points are then added up with some fancy weights. There is nothing one can do about it until the supply exceeds the demand (which is not going to happen soon), so one is constantly kept on guard in academia and elsewhere as to how he is going to present his work, where to submit his papers, what to do to get good student evaluations, etc. This insecure feeling may easily extend to the cases where there is absolutely nothing to fear of, hide, or fight over, like casual conversations about science. However, this is only half-evil because this insecurity can also serve as a drive to do something instead of lying on the sofa and spitting at the ceiling.
The real "root of all evil" is the oxymoronic expression "intellectual property" and the whole convoluted culture around it. Some people will never openly tell you what they are really working on just because they are afraid that you may "steal their ideas" (as if an idea, by its very nature, were not a subject for sharing to the extent that sharing it is the only way to support its very existence), or may "want some share of credit", or for other equally non-sensical reasons (IMHO). This is how many people perceive it even if their scientific reputation is beyond any need to defend at each corner. It also gets reflected even in popular publications about science. I recall the passage about Andrew Wiles somewhere, the sense of which was "Now he had a difficult task to find a person who would be able to help to fix the gap but not take the whole credit for the proof" (Richard Taylor). The NY Times article puts it less bluntly but you'll easily see that the underlying meaning is there. This creates extremely distorted attitudes towards the meaning of the whole endeavor (again, IMHO), which are rather widespread.
At last, there are fashions. You have as many people who want to boast about working in fashionable fields as those who want to wear fashionable dresses and haircuts. That usually is responsible for various "buzzwords" in introductions to mathematical articles or on hiring committee discussions (currently it is "big data", before that we had "mathematical biology" and "nano-science", I'm not trying to predict what comes next) and can spill even into casual conversations when two people are sniffing each other for the first time. As any fashions, the mathematical ones may make sense or make no sense, but they are all destined to come and go. Unfortunately, we'll see the distilled product our generation of mathematicians produced only 50-100 years later, which is beyond the lifespan for most of us.
So, I would say, make nothing of that conversation except the usual conclusion that when you are asked the same question, try not to behave in the way you disliked. I'm not saying "Try to be always straight and honest": if you ever write a grant proposal, prepare a file for promotion, or try to convince other members of the hiring committee that your candidate is "the best", you'll find that this is plainly impossible in this world if you want to get something more than to preserve your "integrity" (the latter is possible in principle but the price is the one Grisha Perelman paid and there was a lot of misunderstanding there on both sides as far as I can tell). Just try to impose some limits on stretching your conscience and look at the mirror now and then before judging others too hard (I certainly will plead guilty myself to whatever "crime" I described in this long rant if somebody wants to bring the charges).


text:
Getting accepted to present at a conference, but choosing not to go - including this in SoP
I am a masters student who has just had my extended abstract accepted to the largest conference in my field, however, I am faced with a very difficult decision that requires perspective.
The Problem Context: I have made plans with a long lasting friend of about 12 years to go away together on a trip during a period of the Summer in which the conference that I have been accepted to is also occurring - I made a mixup in the dates which has gotten me into this position in the first place. The likelihood that we will be able to make this trip happen in the future is very slim because he's going to be having children shortly. On the other hand, presenting at this conference (especially as a masters student), would really help to boost my application when applying to doctoral programs.
I think that if I didn't go on this trip, I would regret it, so I am leaning more towards this than the conference. However, I am wondering if it would be worth mentioning in my SoP that I was admitted to the conference - to signal that I have potential - but due to my previous commitments (without being too specific as to what they are), I chose to decline the opportunity to present.
From the perspective of a graduate admissions committee, I am sure that they would prefer to see on a CV that you attended and presented at the conference. But I wonder if being transparent in the sense that I was accepted and chose to decline presenting at the conference if this could be a net-negative for the application to the schools that I apply for.
Problem Definition: If I were to decline the opportunity to present at this large conference, but made mention in my SoP that I had the opportunity to do so and chose to decline, would this signal a net-negative to graduate committees? Alternatively, would it be better to not mention that I had the opportunity at all?

Why did you submit the abstract to that conference, if you had other plans?

The conference is 2 or 3 days. You and your best-bud can't move your trip 3 days? I think your issues are not entirely academic.

@puppetsock - Unfortunately, no, we cannot. However, I would argue the issue is academic because the question relates to whether or not I should discuss in the SoP that I was accepted to a high level conference but could not attend. The question is not concerned with whether or not I should choose one or the other.

@puppetsock - The heart of the problem is whether it's worth mentioning that I had the potential of attending the conference as opposed to whether I should or should not attend it.

Are you thinking of withdrawing your paper from this conference and submitting it somewhere else?

The SOP is the wrong place in any case. In fact it shows lack of purpose, not "purpose". If you list it, put it in the CV with a note implying accepted, but not presented. The SOP is about your future purpose and goals.

If you list it, an interviewer might probe why you were unable to present your paper, with a view to finding out if it was due to circumstances beyond your control vs. due to poor planning or a lack of resourcefulness and flexibility. Think of the questions in the comments as a sample of the sort of things you might be asked. Do you have good answers?

Have you tried to get in touch with the conference organizers to check if they can skype you in for your talk? I've seen this happening regularly at computer science conferences, where conference papers are a thing, and people need to give talks at the conference to have their papers published.

It's not unheard of for someone to be unable to attend a conference after having their work accepted. This can happen for any number of reasons that may be seen as having varying levels of validity in someone else's eyes, ranging from "death in the family" to "I have better things to do". I don't see a compelling reason to open yourself up to such value judgments about your reasons for choosing to not go to the conference. Having your work accepted at a conference is an accolade in itself, so it's worth mentioning, but you could simply say that you were "unable to attend" and leave it at that. Your particular reasons for not attending aren't relevant to the point you're making (that your work is good enough to get accepted), and may or may not be viewed unfavorably depending on the individual, so there's not much of a reason to go into the details.

I think that you bring up a good point about not opening ones self up to value judgements from the committee. I'll wait for a couple other responses, but so far I think that this one seems to be a reasonable answer.


text:
Do we ever, in a research paper, mention methods we tried but did not get a satisfactory result?
I have been working on an application where we have tried two alternative methods. Both methods are used for the same purpose, but the first one had several problems. Despite getting results we had to look for another method that solved those problems to some extent.
Can I mention the rejected method along with the accepted method in a research paper?

It would be nice to have some examples in the answers to see how it is integrated in the paper... I can't think of any myself (except on journals solely dedicated to that http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/732/why-dont-people-publish-failures/741#741 )

I cannot see any reason not to mention what could be labelled "negative results". If you have tried a method and it failed there can be two reasons, either the choice of method was bad (which is likely a trivial unpublishable result) or the method is in some way not appropriate due to reasons not before understood. In the latter case, there are clear advantages to convey this result to others. This may spawn new research or simply help others avoid using the method. Hopefully you will be able to provide deeper insights into why things did not work out as you first thought. In essence, anything that progresses our understanding is worth bringing forth in a publication.

Yes, especially if most people would expect the method to work, but you can clearly describe why it does not work. It has to be done carefully though, because the focus should be on actual results, not on failed methods (this is not a negative result, it's really a failed attempt to get any result).
In my opinion, the best place to put this is the introduction. After you state your problem, say which method one would try in a first step, then argue why it doesn't work, and then present you approach to the problem. This approach works especially well if someone suggested the method as a feasible approach to your problem, and you cite that in your introduction.
But keep it short: I would think that two to three sentences should be sufficient to describe it. If the failed method is so little known in your field that it requires careful explanation, it's probably not worth being mentioned at all.

Firstly I will qualify this by declaring that I am not strictly an academic.
I have, however, overseen research for a number of years.  This has been government-private partnership industrial research that has been done under full scale production processes of construction - perhaps the largest contiguous experimental research work ever undertaken in hot and tropical climates.  This was a 20+ year project involving a number of programmes - some 120,000 data elements and a team of analysts to PhD level.
Needless to say, it is important that this information be published, presented and disseminated - otherwise it is of no value.  What is paramount in this process is the benefit that this information and message can give to the audience.
Above all each and every statement must be supported by logic and the data.  Try to let the data speak for itself.  Try not to wander into speculative territory - some things cannot be explained.  And the reader must have enough information to make their own informed decision.  We take the view that the researcher has a lot of power - the power to persuade and change an audience and industry to new and better ways.  This is research in action.
This brings us to the question posed. For the audience to make an informed decision, it is essential to report on aspects that did not turn out as expected.  Often we learn more from things that did not work than from those that did.  For example, we established a procedure to carry out full scale temperature monitoring in one experiment, but found, to our surprise, that we still encountered significant ambient (environmental) effects, which prompted us to redesign the experiment until this phenomenon was effectively eliminated.  This type of information, to your audience, is quite valuable.  It also will build more confidence in your work.
However, it should not be something that one dwells on.  Address it, and move on to more important things.  Our work tends to go to practitioners, whereas yours may go to other academics.  In this situation speculation, although I personally stay away it, may be warranted because it may lead you to new research avenues.  These are matters your supervisor or associates will better understand.
Ultimately, research is about objectively seeking the truth - truth, like perfection, being something we may approach but never reach - with successes and failures along the way. Research is amongst the highest of human endeavours, in my view.  Try to let your work and your writing convey these principles.


text:
Style for first introduction sentence - citation required for lurid statement?
I'm trying to write my first introduction sentence, which should be catchy. I came up with a sentence along the lines of "imagine the world without this super thing, all these things wouldn't be possible". Obviously, this case will not occur in the next million years and I guess I won't be able to find any paper supporting my claims. However, the described consequences still seem realistic.
As the rest of the introduction is very technical and dry, I think a fresh start is quite nice, but I'm worried someone might say that this first sentence is not scientific as nobody can back up my statement.
Is having a bit more colloquial or lurid kick-off sentence considered to be a "good" or "bad" scientific writing style?

I remember my English for Academic Purposes (EAP) teacher naming those the "dawn of mankind introductions". I guess in his mind, it means you should avoid such "catchy" phrases.

imagine the world — No.  Just no.  You're writing a scientific paper, not a movie trailer.

I think there is a non negligible chance that this will make a bad first impression on the readers.
Don't get me wrong: I love it when people depart from the dry and oft boring “academic style” of writing and try to invigorate their papers: more concise writing, less use of conditional, more direct statements, use of active voice, stating one's opinion when need be, etc. But this should be done with the goal of making your paper easier to read, and not hyping it. If you start with a broad claim that has little to do with your actual conclusions, you may alienate some readers (“hey, I read the paper because the first line said that a world without gluons would be beneficial in the long term, but then it's only a boring particle physics paper!”).

To give a specific example, when I read papers dealing with physical and chemical properties of water, oftentimes the authors think it wise to start their introduction with a broad statements like:

Water is the most abundant molecule of the human body, and the second most common molecule in the Universe. Its presence or absence has dramatic consequences for human life and civilization: droughts cause famines and floods cause death and disease. Though it has a special relationship with our everyday lives, there is still much we need to learn about it.

and then end with:

In conclusion, we reported the most accurate measurement yet of the bending vibration frequency of heavy water, with an uncertainty of 10–9.

It annoys me.

I think I've read that paper on water.

Is having a bit more colloquial or lurid kick-off sentence considered to be a "good" or "bad" scientific writing style?

It depends. If your attention catching statement is relevant, true, and tasteful, then it is probably "good" scientific writing style. However, if the connection to the rest of your paper and its findings is not immediately apparent, the veracity of the statement is in doubt, or it might be considered not tasteful, then it would be "bad" scientific writing style.
See also Eykanal's answer to this post about the appropriateness of humor in academic writing. These points apply here too. Don't compromise the integrity of the results--is it relevant? Use this type of statement sparingly. And last but by no means least, this may best be reserved for someone who is fairly well-known in their field--don't jeopardize your career!
I would add one more point to Eykanal's excellent advice above. Don't be afraid to be interesting! Just be sure that your interesting statements are in good taste.

I once wrote a journal paper[*] whose abstract was in the form of a limerick:

The analysis of control flow
  Involves finding where returns may go.
        How this can be done
        With items LR(0) and (1)
  Is what in this paper we show.

The reviewers seemed OK with it (which is to say, none of them took issue with it in their reviews), but the editor nixed it on the grounds that ACM's indexing software wouldn't deal with it properly.
The moral of the story, I suppose, is that humans may not be the only "readers" of your paper, and non-standard writing styles may confuse such non-human readers.
[*] The paper showed that algorithms for computing LR(0) and LR(1) items, used in parsing context-free grammars, could be used for control-flow analysis of tail-recursive programs.  I still think it's the best abstract I've ever written. :-)

Um...how do you read the fourth line so that it fits the meter?

I agree, that was a flaw -- that line didn't quite scan.  I'd be hopeless at sonnets. :)

With regard to citations: Generally, statements that are "common knowledge" don't require citations.  Nor do statements that are purely conjectural, or are not intended to be taken literally.  The opening sentences you have in mind seem to satisfy at least one of these criteria.
I won't venture an opinion on whether or not a creative opening sentence is a good idea or not.

First of all, a good (not catchy) title catches readers, not a first sentence in an introduction. The problem of trying to be catchy is that people's opinion about catchy may not be the same as yours, in which case it backfires. yes, science can be dry and the temptation is large to be catchy or funny, but it rarely works. Rarely, partly because each paper is read by only a few, and partly because the diversity in opinions.
The introductory sentence should try to provide the interesting perspective within which your results fit. It is difficult to get right but since it is not the first you write, you can use the results and your hopefully thought through title to ponder what is the perspective you wish your work to fit.


text:
US Graduate School without subject GRE
So here is the situation:
I am a Math student in a very well ranked French university, and I am going to finish my degree (i.e. 2-year MSc, after a 3-year BSc) in August. Therefore, it is time to think of the future: graduate school. In particular, I have been thinking to apply in the US, where many very good groups in the field I'm interested in are located. I have the highest possible GPA, followed advanced courses, research and teaching experience, potentially very good recommendation letters from well-know professors, received awards, and I'll be writing my MSc thesis at a well-known university on the East Coast.
However, I haven't been able to register for the GRE subject test soon enough due to personal reasons, and when I look at the US math graduate school, they almost all require the GRE subject test. Most of them even say that the applications without the GRE and Subject GRE will not even be reviewed, or will be very disadvantaged. The next session is in April, and the results must be submitted in December.
What is the reality of the graduation admissions system in the US? Should I try to apply anyway without the GRE Subject (i.e. are applications without GRE automatically rejected)? Should I wait one year to apply, until I can pass the GRE?

So how did it go?

I'm afraid there's not really a lot you can do. Your best bet is, as always, to contact the departments you are interested in attending, and explain your situation to them. You'll need to have a very convincing reason why you weren't able to take the GRE subject test, and would need a waiver. They may be willing to make an exception; they may not.
Beyond that, I'm not sure what else you can do; the policies and deadlines are all well-known and published, and the departments are not required to give you special treatment.

You might also want to discuss this situation with faculty where you are now. They likely will be able to put you in touch with faculty members they know. When dealing with systems like this, having an advocate on the ground makes an big difference.

Apply anyway.
If you come from a well-ranked university, and have top grades and excellent recommendations from professors there, it shouldn't matter that you are missing a subject GRE; this may disadvantage you slightly, but excellent grades, research and recommendations should easily make up for it. If you came from a less well-ranked university, the lack of a subject GRE would be a much more severe disadvantage.
There may be some universities where bureaucratic requirements will keep you from being considered, but I suspect this is not true at most private universities. The admissions office should be able to give you this information; email them, explain your situation, and ask.