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Academic freedom to select textbooks and use multiple-choice tests on occasion in my courses?
I am a professor at a Community College.  My department has adopted policies through a majority vote .  The two policies I have questions about are:

An instructor must use the approved textbook for any particular course.
An instructor may not use multiple-choice tests for assessments in class.

The majority of the instructors in my department would like a certain textbook that we have used for decades so that students that fail the course don't have to buy a different book if they take someone else.  This is a great point, however, I would argue that the textbook proposed is outdated and far inferior to what's available now.
It seems that 51% of the department can and is stifling innovation.  This is a self reinforcing problem as once a teacher uses a book for awhile they are less likely to change as it requires more work.  For example, if I am forced to use a certain textbook for half my career than I probably wouldn't want to switch in the latter half and would then force newbies to use my outdated textbook if I was forced into choosing one book for everyone... the cycle continues.
In regards to multiple-choice exams, I find that my students can be served better in some situations by assessing their ability to express answers in different forms.  Surprisingly they often don't know how to do this.  Below is a just one basic example of how I might use a multiple choice question to aid in students learning:

1/2+1/3 is equivalent to

a.  3/4
b.  4/6
c.  20/24
Students are usually taught to get 5/6, but often don't realize that 20/24 is equivalent because they are simply following a pattern and do not always understand that their answer has equivalent forms.  I believe using multiple-choice in some scenarios like this is worthwhile.
It is my understanding that as a tenured instructor, I am able to teach a class in the pedagogical manner I believe is best for my class while satisfying all other requirements.  Does this include what textbook I use and the types of assessments I sometimes use?
Maybe I am wrong.  Thank you.

Have you reviewed what your contract says about these issues?

I have.  It states "All faculty members, regardless of their employment status, shall enjoy the privileges and exercise the responsibilities inherent in academic freedom as outlined in the AAUP's 1940 Statement as interpreted in 1970.".  In reading it, it seems there is a lot of room for interpretation.

The discussion about the benefits and drawbacks of certain types of books and questions has been moved to chat because it's secondary to the OP's main question. Please read this FAQ before posting another comment.

bias-variance-tradeoff

You can trivially adapt that multiple choice question into one that actually tests your students' understanding more thoroughly. "For each of the following, explain why it is or is not equivalent to 1/2 + 1/3: a) 3/4 b) 5/6 c) 4/6 d) 20/24"

It is my understanding that as a tenured instructor, I am able to teach the class in the pedagogical manner I believe is best for my class.

In principle, I agree with this, and I believe that you should be able to run the course based on your considered professional opinion of what is best.  But keep in mind that this is a two-edged sword! As I see it, academic freedom isn't unlimited license to do what you want; it's the freedom to try what you want, and be judged based on the results.  (The same applies to academic freedom in research: nobody will stop you from working on the problems you find interesting today, but in the long run, they had better lead to publications.)
I don't know what the tenure system is like at your institution, but commonly there is some form of ongoing evaluation of a professor's effectiveness in teaching, with potential consequences if it is poor.  And if you're pursuing these methods against the advice of your colleagues, some of your peers may be looking for evidence that it's not working (or may see your choice as ipso facto evidence of poor teaching).
So if you go this route, it would be wise to try to measure to what extent it is successful, in some way that your colleagues will find convincing: exam scores, evaluations, grades in this and subsequent courses, common assessments, etc.  If it goes well, you'll be able to show that your methods are effective.  And if it doesn't, you'll know that you need to change course quickly (and your responsiveness to evidence can itself be a point in your favor).

This makes sense.  Interestingly enough, our older faculty are having issues in their tenure review process now days.  Younger faculty are pushing group learning format while the older faculty aren’t.  Faculty that have had perfect evaluations for 25 years are upset they are being dinged now. Their solution is choose faculty to be part of their tenure review that have the same views they do the traditional format is superior to group format in their classroom.  Personally I don’t think one is better than the other.  The right tool at the right time for each teacher is preferable in my opinion.

Academic freedom is not contingent on students getting high exam scores. If a professor prefers to teach a subject one way rather than another (and, let's say, does so in good faith) - that's legitimate even if the grades are lower.

@einpoklum-reinstateMonica: I am not claiming that exam scores are the sole measure of effectiveness (nor even necessarily a good one).  But I do think that academic freedom in teaching is contingent, in the long run, on actually teaching effectively by some broad measure.  If the professor continues to insist on teaching a certain way, in spite of clear evidence that it isn't succeeding (in whatever sense), then I would call into question whether they are still doing it in good faith.

@NateEldredge: The thing is, lower grades in and of themselves are not clear evidence that the teacher is failing.

@einpoklum-reinstateMonica: I never said they were!  I have tried to consistently use the phrase "effective teaching".  This can be measured and evaluated in many ways, of which grades or exam scores are only one possibility.

@NateEldredge: Fair enough.

As a current undergraduate student who recently attended a Community College I personally agree with at least requiring all professors to use the same textbook. It means that students from different sections are able to study together more easily than if the books and overall approach to course are different as I'm seeing in some courses at my current University. At least some Community Colleges allow you to change courses up to at least one week into the course with no extra fees, which means that if you find a professor doesn't suit your learning style you can change to another professor, but if you need to buy another text book that would become significantly more difficult for those students. This is especially important in a multi-course series like Calculus where its possible that you could purchase the textbook for the entire series for a fraction of the cost of purchasing the book for each course individually.
I know I'm probably in the minority regarding Ebooks as a large number of my fellow students in the time I spent at a Community College preferred them, but I always preferred a physical book as most Ebooks come with a subscription of some kind which requires renewal every semester for a significant portion of the cost of the book.
And as a final point regarding selection of teaching material, it seems that your department only requires you to use the textbook they decide is best and you are able to supplement your teaching materials with animations and MatLab objects as you see fit. This was a very successful scheme for my Calculus 3 professor as they were able to quickly show us what the concepts looked like as 3D objects in a way they would have been unable to on a blackboard.

+1 very good answer. for courses like calc, which often have many teachers teaching the same material, it is very important to have consistency throughout the sections.  It's something that community colleges almost always struggle with when compared to universities.

Since Matlab is very expensive I would suggest an open-source alternative such als Octave, etc.

@UweZiegenhagen A student version of Matlab exists which is not very expensive. In principle I have no issues with people going open-source, but Octave does have issues. The tool isn't important, as long as it does its job well, but not all open-source tools are well designed or maintained though, so be careful if you do choose something that is not "standard".

@Graham: I had no problems using Octave for the MatLab assignments in a 2nd year Linear Algebra course (on my Linux desktop ~20 years ago).  Unless Octave has gotten worse in that time, I don't expect problems for basic student stuff.  Of course I was just doing the most simple things with matrices on a text terminal, not graphics.

One more thing to consider is series of courses. If I recall correctly, my university used the same text book for the entire 4-quarter Intro Calculus series

It is my understanding that as a tenured instructor, I am able to teach the class in the pedagogical manner I believe is best for my class. Wouldn't this include what textbook I use and the types of assessments I use?

At least one of your questions is discussed on the American Association of University Professors’ website:

I have been asked to teach several sections of an introductory course, but I do not want to use the textbook used by faculty colleagues in the other sections. I believe it is poorly written and replete with errors. Do I have the right to assign a different textbook?
In a course for which you are the only instructor, you have the right, under principles of academic freedom, to determine the texts (and other materials) the students will be required to read. Your right in this regard is not absolute, however. The texts should be related to the subject of the course and practical concerns about availability and cost should be considered. Still, the principle is clear that the faculty member who is solely responsible for the course has the freedom to select readings for it.

Regarding assessments, I don’t have an authoritative source, but I suspect you are correct that it’s up to you to decide on your methods of assessment, assuming they are within the norm of what’s broadly considered acceptable in higher education. This AAUP web page has additional resources where you might be able to find some relevant guidance.

Good find! I note that the right is qualified by "course for which you are the only instructor." So this applies only if there are no other sections of this course number that are taught by other instructors. The paragraph after the one you quoted states "in a multisection course taught by several faculty members, however, responsibility is shared among the instructors for identifying the text(s) to be assigned to students." However, it also grants you the right to use whatever supplementary materials you want (e.g. YouTube animations). Is OP the only instructor for this course?

In this case, no.  There are other instructors.  Interesting that it applies when you are the only instructor.  Is this per semester?  What if I teach it in the fall and someone else teaches it in the spring? Dropped or failed students will still have to buy a new textbook.  Cost to these students is being used as the central argument against use of different textbooks in a multi sectional class.

While you can likely do whatever you want in this regard, it's likely that there will be some repercussions if colleagues find out.

@Michael I think it’s pretty obvious that “only instructor” means “only instructor that term” and not “only instructor ever”. But I would advise you to be careful about interpreting this FAQ in an overly literal or legalistic manner. Academic freedom isn’t a legally defined term, and AAUP aren’t the one central authority that gets to define what it means. A certain amount of common sense will always be required in these discussions. Academic freedom is a lofty idea but in the real world there are lots of practical details you’ll have to consider including cost, convenience to the students etc.

Bottom line: ignoring practical issues, at least in a philosophical sense you are correct that you have the freedom to assign a textbook and other reading materials of your choice. Whether you really want to insist on exercising that freedom is a different question.

Thank you, Dan. Yes, I understood. : )  I was tyring (unsuccessfully with satire) to point out an inconsistency in my department's motivation to save students from buying another book the following semester.  I used the 2-semester example to illustrate this.

@MichaelMcCain Interesting that they're using cost to the students who drop and retake the course as the central argument. I would think a more relevant argument would be wanting to ensure that all students who take the course in a given semester are being taught the same material.

No.  The requirements in our course outlines are paramount.  If a selected textbook was missing information from the outline then we are suppose to supplement with our own material.

I have in the past been both the (junior) instructor wanting to innovate amongst dinosaurs, as well as the coordinator of a multi-section course where there weren't clear policies on this matter, and I was trying to navigate student and individual faculty member expectations.
To the other answers, I'd add there can be real benefits to consistency in textbook choice between sections, especially if the course material in any way underpins material taught in follow-on courses. You can say not only "remember X?" but also "...it's covered in section 3.4 in [...]" without whines of "but my prof used a different book and we didn't cover this" (even if it was covered, just differently). And students will tend to "shop around" which section of the course to register anyway, and you don't want to add textbook choice and test format as another one for them to overindex on.
As others have said, your academic freedom isn't absolute and you should respect the policies of your department in this, and work from within to change them if it's important.
However, you also don't need to slavishly adhere to a poor textbook. Enrich the class presentation with animations if you want. Find (free) web resources to point the students to as extra reading. Do your multiple choice quizzes as ungraded self-assessments (or something like that). And if your pedagogical choices generate better learning outcomes, use that to build the case for change at the department policy level.

The rights/privileges of tenure are highly varied, but rarely if ever does this permit carte Blanche to conduct your classroom in any way you see fit. Even at the most prestigious research institutions tenured professors are subject to departmental rules and regulations. Especially if those rules are democratically realized, it is not advisable that you go rogue.
My advice is to respect your democratic process and lobby for changes or even a trial run using the appropriate forum.

This is good to know.  Thank you.

Asking for a trial run of something different sounds like a good way to get it approved. Lobby for something temporary to reduce the perceived threat to the status quo.

My own thoughts:
It is very common for departments to adopt a single calculus book. This has disadvantages, as you pointed out. But it also has a number of advantages. For example, there is consistency if students need to switch from one section to another, and there is consistency between Calc I and Calc II. Also, as you pointed out, it can save students money.
If you want to persuade your department to change, here are some suggestions:

Take the financial concerns seriously; for some students, a $200 book might mean an extra 25 hours at a part-time job.
Find ways to incorporate animations and/or technology into your class, with the existing book. If your teaching is particularly effective, they might be willing to listen to your calls for change.
Don't complain that the current book is "antiquated"; just because a methodology is new, doesn't mean that it's better. Instead, look for studies or evidence showing the merits of your approach.

On the multiple choice exams, you might have a lot more leeway. The policy is probably there to prevent faculty from writing exams which are all multiple choice (and which would take very little effort to grade).
If you want to include a couple of multiple choice questions on an exam with mostly free response questions, your chair might be supportive. You described a sound pedagogical reason for wanting to do so; if you haven't done so already, I'd recommend proposing this to your chair.

In any case, I would be frankly surprised if evaluators are going to go through the tenured OP's exams closely enough to even notice if a few thoughtful MC questions are given.

Regarding the textbook: academics have a freedom which textbook to choose for a class, but the freedoms of individual academic may have to be steered or controlled by the Department. The simplest  example is when a professor publishes their own textbook and recommends it to students for an exorbitant fee. Students feel obligated to purchase the textbook not only for academic reasons but also to please their professor and improve their chance for a better grade. This is a typical (textbook) case of conflict of interests, and such recommendations have to be carefully assessed by Department.
Individual academic freedoms can not change the laws of physics, neither they can serve as a universal solution to any problem. If you want to set up a very expensive or dangerous experiment, you are free to do so, but you still need to find external funding and/or obtain health and safety and ethical approvals.  Similarly, if textbooks are too expensive for students and/or for the University/College library, academic freedoms will not buy those books, unless you want to donate enough copies to the library.
Regarding the multiple-choice questions: They may be perfectly fine in the area of mathematics that you teach. However, if one lecturer uses such quizes, and students find them easy, this may form an expectation on their side that all lecturers have to do the same. The academic expectations is a part of academic culture which is shared by everyone in your University/College. It is quite important to maintain a consistent and fair approach throughout the whole curriculum. You are still free to suggest your model of assessment, but since your teaching style affects the expectations of students and hence the way they engage with other lecturers and subjects, it is appropriate for your colleagues to have a say about it. If you share the benefits of your approach with them, perhaps, they all will be happy to adopt your method.

This article will be of interest, it describes a grievance case on this topic.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/11/09/cal-state-fullerton-upholds-reprimand-professor-who-wouldnt-assign-180-textbook
For multi-section courses you need to do exactly what you said which is "convince my department." A faculty is a body of colleagues and you need to make your best argument just like you would about anything else.  Gather evidence, organize it solidly, put it into language that makes sense.  You could consider instead asking the department to open discussion of the whole issue and join a group in reviewing and evaluating many options including OER, the book you want and other materials. One thing that you might learn if you open a discussion is that your colleagues have already thought pretty hard about these policies. You could apply for a small grant to run an experimental section and you could also engage with your local teaching and learning center to come up with a way to measure whether your book is more effective.  You could also scan the literature for evidence.
In terms of multiple choice questions, again, I suggest you do a literature review on this issue -- the literature on teaching calculus in particular is huge and NSF has funding many studies on this.  Present the evidence and share your bibliography.
Also think about the stakeholders in calculus, which in  many cases are primarily the chemistry, biology, physics and computer science departments (and sometimes others such as if you have engineering) and not mainly the math department. What do they need students to be able to do? For example, they need to be able to have students use calculus in the context of solving a chemistry problem or in biostatistics. Maybe open ended questions prepare students better for this, I have no idea, but you should consider it.
Building a coherent and effective curriculum is a collaborative and complex process. Here you are not building a whole curriculum, just modify one course.

Not an instructor, but I once took a course with an instructor that was in a similar situation.  We were required to use the existing "standard" textbook in spite of its issues.  My professor wasn't shy about his feelings for that particular text, or from letting us know we were only using it because the department required it.  He gave out his own unofficial errata for the book.  If you stopped by his office for help, he'd frequently re-teach something by using diagrams or examples from his personal copy of the book that he preferred.  When the textbook was lacking something, he'd pass out supplementary material that he had created.  All of these things were usually accompanied by a comically over-dramatic sigh of exasperation at the quality of the current textbook.
We didn't think much about any of this at the time, but there were two long-term consequences.  First, the students that went through his class frequently complained to the department about the textbook.  Some even explicitly asked why we weren't using the professor's preferred book since it seemed to be better.  Second, students that took the course under another instructor frequently complained to the department that their friends' course was easier because they got all these extra materials and weren't limited to what's in the current textbook.  After a couple of semesters, the department "decided" to go with a different textbook.
Never underestimate the power of the bully pulpit.  Your department leadership might not listen to your single voice, but it's another thing entirely when complaints are coming in from many different people.

I'll speak in regards to the textbook situation for a colleague in the Math Department where I work and also for myself. The Math department at my institution has 1 textbook for all of Calculus. The advantage as they see it is the students only need to make 1 $150 payment for up to 3 classes. Cheaper if they rent it for 1 semester. Faculty are not allowed to use other textbooks. However, they are allowed to teach their course without a book! I took Calc 2 with them and used no book. He wrote all his material (keeping it somewhat short, but to the point) and made videos of him explaining things and working through example problems that we could use a reference outside of class to assist our learning. This is a lot of setup, but once you have your material set, it won't change a lot, and you can adapt if needed. I don't suspect much will change with Calculus.
For myself, I teach a Intro to Kinesiology course that has only 1 book as well. I ditched that as soon as I read a little of it though and made my own course content. This allows me to adapt much more quickly to the changing field of Kinesiology. I can also focus on certain aspects beyond the book that I like or think is useful for the students.
I'm not sure if you're able to ditch the book, but I would suggest that; if you have time to devote to making your own material.


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Is there any dedicated, academic channel i could use to establish contact with other universities on an international scale?
I'm a doctoral student at the fine arts faculty of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Spain (European Union), in the Art and Technology department, and i have a question about the elaboration of my thesis that you might be able to help me with.
To acquire a sizable part of the information needed to conduct my research, i need to establish contact with forty two universities spread across the globe, mostly to conduct interviews in text, audio and video formats about culture, art, and technology.
I already asked both my thesis directors and faculty administrators about what the best way to contact this universities would be, but they have been unable to offer me a proper answer so far. I could contact them with my personal university email, but i still think that it would be more appropriate to do so trough a dedicated channel, but i wonder about the existence of a dedicated, international channel that i could use to do so in a more formal way.
To recap, my question would be as follows:

As a doctoral student and citizen of the European Union, is there any dedicated, preferably free of charge, academic channel i could use to establish contact with other universities on an international scale?

Thanks a lot for your time.
Martin

Google is your friend. Maybe your only friend.

Yes. It is called your professional email.

Who exactly do you want to contact/interview in the universities? It looks like you need a more specific target

Universities run on email. As a university student, you probably have a university email address? Use that. But also, get advice from your thesis advisor(s) on who to contact; just writing to universities probably won't get yhou far.

Are you asking whether there is something like a "Red Phone" that allows calling other universities from your university, with a guarantee that the other side will actually pick up and deal with your request?

What do you mean by "dedicated channel"?

Ever been to a conference?

On the topic of the university e-mail: I had thought about it, but i wanted to check if there was a better channel first (when i talked about my personal e-mail i was actually talking about my university e-mail, sorry for the confusion, i'll update the OP). I have consulted my thesis advisors extensively, but they don't have experience in dealing with this kind of situations. In any case, thanks a lot for your time, i'll keep trying.

Email seems to be the way to go, at least if I go by all the unsolicited "please participate in my study on XYZ in academia"-mails every address posted on some official webpage seems to get. In other words, try it but be warned that many recipients will treat such mails as spam.

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Can a first author of a pre-print be demoted in the version sent to a journal?
Can a PI decide to submit to a journal a previously agreed manuscript, uploaded to a pre-print server, and swap the first author with someone else after introducing some changes in the writing? Would the first author (student) have some way of defending himself against this?
EDIT: It is a field where author order matters.

Did you check any of the other questions with the tag author-order, or the related questions in the sidebar?

@cheersmate yes, I checked and couldn't find any answer to this question. My question refers to a pre-print paper where the order of authors was already agreed, and unilaterally changes to this order by the last author upon submission to a journal, without modification of the paper's scientific content, only some writing changes.

The answer to such questions is always the same, if you wrote part of something, you own the copyright, so legally it can't be published anywhere, without your consent. So in theory you could contact the journal and tell them that you will not allow them to publish it. But if you do so, good luck in ever finding someone willing to work with you again...

Well, I know I have the nuclear option, I wanted to know if there is other option in this case, as the paper is already published as pre-print.
My intention is not for the paper not to be published, but for the first author position to be respected as it is very important in this field and was already agreed (as the pre-print version shows).

How big are the changes that have been made? Do they warrant a change of the authorship order?

@cheersmate In my opinion they do not, they are rewordings of content that was already there and like 8 lines totally new in the introduction and discussion. Methods and results are exactly the same.

What is right and what is commonly done can be quite different. Both depend somewhat on the field and maybe other things. If a group of authors is large, then a seemingly small change might have a big impact on who is judged first.
You can, and probably should, talk to the PI and ask for the reasoning. You may not be happy with the reasons given, but if you are a student, you may need to accept the decision even if it bothers you. It is even possible, if not exactly right, that the PI is trying to give a boost to someone ready to finish.
If the PI is favoring someone now, maybe it will be yourself when you are close to finishing. Note that the last is pure speculation and may not apply at all, of course.
I'll give two bits of advice, though they apply more to the future than to this particular paper. First, try to work out authorship questions early rather than late. Students may not even have the power to do this in a large group, but those with relatively equal academic standing should always work this out at the start of a collaboration in fields in which it matters.
Second, and more important, the paper in question is not likely to be either the best or last publication under your name. Any authorship is a plus for a beginning academic. Before you escalate and get people upset, think about your long term goals and how best to reach them. Having a supportive PI and a circle of collaborators is a good thing. Avoid being academically abused, of course, and if it is a repeated thing, then you are probably in the wrong group.
But for a student, and maybe a post-doc, what you can do effectively in such situations while preserving and advancing your career is limited. You are (too) dependent on the good will of the PI.

Hi, you make good points. Unfortunately it was already talked and there was no reasoning other than there is no time to explain the changes and the PI knows best. This paper is also supposed to be the big boost for the first author. Authorship was also worked out at a very early stage, and the first author spent months working alone in the paper, and only got feedback when it was close to be done. I consider your answer right, in the sense there is nothing that can be done in such a case. Thanks.

Yes.
Preprints are preprints. They're preliminary versions. It's not surprising if the preprint differs from the version that's submitted to a journal. Author orders can even switch during revisions, during publication, etc.
You also ask about the first author "defending" himself/herself against this, which implies you think the order switch is unethical. In that case, speak to the other authors first, argue why the first author deserves to be the first author, and if they can't be convinced (+ you're equally convinced of your position), that's when you escalate.

Hmmm. Escalate is a dangerous word. It is a sword that cuts two ways. If they can't be convinced something something something. But don't take actions that would destroy your own career. Think long term about the trajectory of your work and the people you need to help you progress it. Short term thinking can be counterproductive.

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What opportunities are there to write casual articles in math?
I am wondering how to find good opportunities in editorials that publish work to educate younger readers and invite them to be curious about mathematics. For context, I have recently produced many interesting results regarding how the number π pertains to Lebesgue spaces and have accompanied this work with many enjoyable plots. I am fairly certain that the work I've produced is not something worthy of traditional publications. However, I thought it would still be a great topic for a younger audience to write about. I have considered starting a blog, however, I am hesitant as I do not think it will sufficiently reach many people. I know that there are mathematics magazines—and even more broadly scholastic/educational magazines—that aim to engage younger minds (maybe 16 to 25-year-olds) in mathematics. Given that there do exist these magazines, how would one go about judging which avenues of publication/general dissemination are the best fit for this work?

Ah, young people these days, with their nightclubs and loud music and Lebesgue spaces...

'Mathematics' and 'casual' have no intersecting space. More seriously, there are some publications on recreational mathematics and on teaching mathematics. Take a look.

I'm not sure how "casual" applies here

@AzorAhai-him- I am using casual in a way that describes how I might enjoy reading an article about glaciers or tectonic plates despite having no real in-depth knowledge of geology. I suppose I am classifying academic literature into two categories: Technical (think Elsevier or Springer) and Casual (types of articles that are meant to captivate an audience—in this case a young audience—or educate a lay audience). Perhaps there are better words than causal but I think the point of the post remains just as clear even with a better synonym.

if you do start a blog, you might find Summer of Math exposition (https://some.3b1b.co/) interesting. It is a competition for math explainers which mostly serves as a platform to discover them

@DG_researcher Yes, the post is clear; my suggestion was to align the title with the post, rather than clarify the body. Maybe this is a math-specific terminology, but I think the title would better fit the body if it included your  mention of younger readers

Having tried and failed many times, I find it genuinely impossible to explain advanced mathematics at a popular science level. How would you explain something like, say, etale cohomology (or even just schemes or fundamental groups), to someone who knows only basic calculus or even less? Maybe you can do a very high level survey of an area like geometric topology but that's about it...

That said, if by a younger audience, you mean undergrads in math or people with comparable knowledge of mathematics, then sure there's a lot you could do

The usual method of choosing a journal is to think about where other, similar papers were published. I'm a mathematician, and I support you writing up what you described and getting it published! Here are some venues:
The Mathematical Intelligencer
The American Mathematical Monthly
The Mathematical Gazette
The Graduate Journal of Mathematics (disclaimer: I am on the editorial board)
PRIMUS (if you can frame it a bit more about teaching)
The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics (this one is slightly more of a stretch but is worth being aware of; I've published two papers here)
You can check recent issues of these venues and see if they have published papers in line with the one you're working on. Good luck!

For your specific case, I suspect that Experimental Mathematics could be an appropriate venue. This is a research rather than expository journal, but I suspect your work is at least related to what they look for - experiential, maybe computational results which, while not constituting a proof of a theorem, provide valuable mathematical insights.
I would also add that the Mathematical Society of Japan publishes a wonderful expository journal, Sugaku (Japanese for "mathematics"). The AMS publishes a partial translation as Sugaku Expositions. Your results might be a good fit, although very unfortunately they only accept articles in the Japanese language.


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Bad Relationship with Master's Supervisor: Missing Reference
I'm in the situation that I'm completing my master's research degree and I'm in the process of applying to several applied mathematics / computational science programs.
Here's me complaining:
I do research for a collaboration and most of my research work has been for the calibration field of the experiment. My relationship with my supervisor has been less than good. He originally lied about the kind of research I'd be doing and because I'm in a program where you pick you supervisor before entering into the program, my impressions of him where very preliminary and not reflective of his concern in students' interests. My current impression of him is that he's a career administrative academic, his involvement in the collaboration is merely to appear involved in research despite not being in charge or overseeing any research that comes out of the collaboration itself. In the past, I've voiced my concerns with him about needing to be more clear and direct about the work he wants from me for the collaboration, only for him to be incommunicado for several months, that is until someone in the collaboration needs something he promised he'd get for them. At that point, he comes to me telling me to get something to him in the next week, saying I haven't been doing anything meaningful; over working me. The research I do do often does involve different people from different institutions, but it's never enough to be a reference for me as my involvement with other collaborations is somewhat scattered
End of complaining.
I can't switch advisors because for one, he's the assistant chair and would and would have impact on if I should be kept in the program if I request a change.   And if I did end up switching, the department would likely delay my defense, which I cannot afford. I'm stuck with my advisor and project till my thesis. Which I can deal with, it's the lack of reference in my applications that worries me. Now, I have quite a bit of research as an undergraduate where I'm getting letters of reference (all research experience). But will the lack of a letter from my thesis research screw me over?

I was in a similar situation last semester. My advisor had me join a research project, but gave me little to no information regarding said project. He told me that I would be working with honeypots, and it wasn't until my first day that I realized he meant honeypots in the cybersecurity sense and not literal honeypots. Although I was relieved to find out that I wouldn't have any bee stings from my research I could tell that I wasn't going to get any help from my advisor. In fact, he was away attending conferences for most of the semester, and rarely responded to any of my emails.
Here's what worked for me that I think will help you. You need to post up outside your advisor's office. When he finally comes in, you need to talk to him about how you're feeling and your current situation. I don't want to say confront him because I think that's too strong of a word, but he needs to know that he is not pulling his end of the bargain. Or, if you can't switch advisors, just ask him if there is anyone other resource that you can talk to, to gain more knowledge about the project (but on the low make this your "advisor").
As for the references, I would talk to the other people that you are collaborating with. See if they can help you with a reference letter. Or try to find other people who have worked with your advisor and see what they have done. I hope this helps and wish you well on your future endeavors.


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Do researchers reuse benchmark results for existing algorithm when comparing with their algorithm?
Unfortunately I do not have any prior research experience, therefore I had a few questions while I was studying papers on cluster analysis.
Can a researcher legally and with permission use the benchmark values of the pre-existing algorithm to compare with theirs? This question came to me after I noticed identical results reported in multiple papers for some population based cluster analysis algorithms. The different papers propose a new algorithm and then compare the performance of it with some other algorithms over some common dataset. I have noticed that, for some algorithms the values reported are an exact match. The nature of these algorithm is stochastic, and also the different authors claim to have run the algorithms different number of iterations and then use the mean. Therefore no two sets of run will result with the same mean, min, max and standard deviation.
My suspicion is either it is permissible to reuse the benchmark results with permission. Or a common benchmarking framework exists (still, how can two papers reporting using different number of iterations land into the same identical result?)
I have reproduced the work of the papers using Octave and benchmark is similar to what is reported in the papers, but is definitely not identical.
Also, how generally these are done? If a researcher has to implement 5 algorithms to compare, then do they implement their own and then verify and compare or request the version the author has used and then benchmark with respect to that specific piece of code to maintain unbiased experimentation?
[EDIT]
Quoting the results from another paper (with citation) is all right, but using it in the benchmark comparison table is something which is practiced in research?

It depends on the context. Maybe you could point to an article that does this and the table that is bugging you so that we could help you out?

Quoting the results from another paper (with citation) is all right, but using it in the benchmark comparison table is something which is practiced in research?

I would wager it is not done enough. It is certainly ok, even required, to compare your results to earlier work, and the more fair and unbiased you can do this, the better. It is perfectly acceptable to say "on the right-hand side of Table XY, we report the results for this problem previously achieved in [1]" (and then list them exactly as reported).
The one thing to make sure, though, is that when you want to say that you are better than a previous work, the comparison is actually fair. For instance, one sometimes sees papers where the authors use a long-running deterministic algorithm (which you need a map/reduce cluster to execute on) and claim that their work is better than an earlier heuristic approach, which was built for speed and on-line execution. Don't do that.

You are definitely allowed to quote the results from another paper, with citation. You can also email the author and ask for the code (or grab it from their webpage). In this case, citation is also the right thing.
Depending on the benchmarks in question, the results may yield the same results to the accuracy presented on the paper (if I get a value of 0.98547856842, I will probably round it to 0.985). If you repeat the same benchmark on the same dataset enough times, you can converge to the same numbers to the accuracy printed. It is even easier if the dataset is small.
Another way to enforce replicability is to use the same random seed.
This said, I would be suspicious if they both report the exact same results. If you have the mean, standard deviation, and population size, you can do a statistical test to check the probability of them being reported equal.
If they just copied the results from the other paper without citing it, it would be a bad practice, but it does not invalidate the research.

If the algorithm starts from the same place it may converge into the same,or if the dataset is small,it will converge into a possibly the global optima result in identical values. But in my implementation (random seed) different sets of runs with,say,20 iterations,get similar results,but never identical.
Not only two, but I see such similarity in atleast 4 papers, published in prestigious journals.
Quoting the results from another paper (with citation) is all right, but using it in the benchmark comparison table is something which is practiced in research?

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


text:
What should I do if I attended a conference but forgot to register?
Due to some unexpected personal events, I left the conference earlier than intended. The lines to register had been so long and from past experience, I knew the trick was to wait until the last day when there are zero people in line. It's been two weeks and I was filling out my travel reimbursement when it hit me. I never registered...
I presented a paper and chaired a panel. I feel terrible about it, but at the same time, I'm a brand new assistant professor and my student loan payments just started and well, I'm flat freaking broke.
I was just going to say screw it and be sure I pay next year and also sign up to volunteer for some things next year. But now I'm really concerned that my university is going to ask me why my registration isn't on my travel reimbursement form. I don't want to give them the impression that I did I'm the kind of person that would intentionally sneak into an academic conference without paying.
What should I do?

If your registration is going to be on your travel reimbursement form, what does the fact that you're "flat freaking broke" have to do with anything? Are you saying that you don't have the ability to pay the registration fee for the period of time until you get reimbursed?

I would suggest to contact the conference organizing committee as soon as possible and ask them what can be done about it. You can explain what happened and why, and also directly offer to pay the registration fee afterwards. If you presented at the conference and also chaired a session, there should be enough evidence that you were actually there. Conference committees are human too, and will understand that mistakes happen. If you are honest, it should be possible to convince them that you did not intentionally try to sneak into the conference or avoid the fees.
Note that many conferences will only publish your contributions if you have a valid registration and also paid the fees, so it might definitely be in your own interest to fix this mistake.
As the comment by @Roland suggests, it could also be helpful to contact your administration responsible for the reimbursement and to ask for their advice on how they want the situation to be handled. Since you are worried what impression you might give them, this should rather help to have them understand that you actively try to correct your mistake.

They probably will be more lenient if you are the one to seek them out and correct the mistake.

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


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Minor Error in Submitted Elsevier Journal Paper
I have recently submitted a paper. I feel the paper is good quality but I have found several mistakes. They are minor editorial mistakes that do not affect the science but could cause confusion.
I am repeating some well-known algorithms. However when I say algorithm X is represented by equation Y I have found that there is a mismatch. If one were to look at the well-known equations with knowledge of them it will be clear they are mismatched. This is due to us adding another algorithm in a list and not updating the numbers.
What is likely to happen? I would be very disappointed if they were to reject the paper on these grounds. I hope they wouldn't assume I don't know the content of my area because of this mismatch. It's an Elsevier journal. Is there a "most likely" outcome here?

First of all, that it's Elsevier doesn't seem to have anything to do with it.  (Unless you didn't want to submit there at all, but evidently you do, which is fine by me...)
Based on your description of the errors, I agree that they are minor.  In my experience, many if not most papers contain minor errors of this form, and a lot of referees include it as part of their job to point out the minor errors that they find (though of course you cannot count on this).  If the minor errors are sufficiently numerous that creates a bad impression, as would minor errors that are not viewed as minor (obviously).

I would be very disappointed if they were to reject the paper on these grounds.

In the great game of journal submissions, anything is possible.  If it happened it would be a raw deal.  Raw deals occur relatively frequently in this game, and I know of no way to systematically protect against them.  In this case, being a bit more careful is obvious advice, but don't take it too seriously: one could spend twice as much time proofreading and still have minor errors.

I hope they wouldn't assume I don't know the content of my area because of this mismatch.

To me that seems even more unlikely and also a bit off-center.  The task of a referee is not to judge you but rather your paper.  Full mastery of the content of your subject area is neither necessary nor sufficient to get your paper accepted, I would say.
In terms of what to do, you have two options: either wait patiently for the outcome, or contact the editor saying you found some typos in your paper, have prepared a new version, and are willing to pass that along to the referees if they think that is a good idea.  My advice: if it's only been a couple of weeks since submission, probably the referee has not sat down to read the paper carefully yet.  (At least that's the way it is in pure mathematics.  If it's otherwise in your field: congratulations.)  Sending along a fresh version will probably be well received.  (If it can be received.  The automated journal submission systems complicate this a bit.)  If it's been much longer than that, the referee may have already been through this part of your paper, and sending a revised version is asking them to look at two versions of your paper at once, which is a bit annoying.
Anyway, try not to worry about it.  Others have done this and worse than this many times over.

I'd favor sending a corrected version of the paper to the editor, even if there has been enough time for the referee to have probably begun working on the paper. To reduce the referee's annoyance, you should also inform the editor just what has been changed.  That way the referee doesn't have to start from scratch on the new version.

Congratulations on passing 100k Pete!


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Can a thesis contain preface?
Usually preface is written in books and myself personally have not seen it in a thesis.
But, can a master's or doctoral thesis contain a preface?
Thanks

There are no universal rules for what can or can't go in a thesis.  Your institution might have rules, however.

my institute has no prescribed thesis format

Is there anything you want to put into the preface, but you don't want to write in the introduction chapter?

yes, there are a few things, which in my opinion are not suitable for introduction or abstract

As long as your advisor okay with it, I think you can, in my opinion.

Note: This was going to be a comment, but then I realized it actually answers the question that was asked.
The following 2004 Ph.D. dissertation at Utrecht University has a preface on pp.
 xi-xviii, so the answer is YES.
Ideas and Explorations : Brouwer's Road to Intuitionism
However, the question you possibly want answered is whether a Ph.D. dissertation at YOUR university can have a preface. To find the answer, you can ask someone knowledgeable about the specific dissertation format rules at your university, or you could visit the library shelves where recent Ph.D. dissertations are shelved and spend 20-30 minutes quickly flipping through the first few pages of the 100-200 most recent dissertations, keeping in mind that for some universities the answer might be department-specific.

It's your work, so unless there are rules to the opposite, I would say go ahead. Many theses contain acknowledgments in a preface, for example -- most of the time thanking real people, but sometimes also their dog, a brewery, or imagined events. Read through enough theses and you will get the idea.
So, see whether there are rules, and if there are none talk to your adviser what is appropriate. Beyond that, you're the author and decide how best you want to say what you want to say.


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Cover letter v/s statement of research interests
I saw a postdoctoral position advertisement in engineering field, which has asked applicants to submit a cover letter  and a statement of research interest. If these two are not explicitly asked, then I usually prepare single document mostly containing my research interest along with a CV.
I would like to know what should be the content of the two different documents, means what should go where?
Thanks

For me, the cover letter is about who you are (and why do you fit to the position). The research statement is what you want to do (and have done before).

Statement of research interest seems to deal specifically with you potential future research. Though, you can obviously base your future project describing your proved past record. The cover letter seems to be a general info, something that you are XYZ  who completer PhD in ABC university, has the following background and you are interested in this position. In the cover letter I would briefly mention your research interests and refer for more details to the  statement of research interest.
I think that there is nothing special about this two-letters format, but it is just some bureaucratic requirement of the university.  May be worth asking them  how long should be research statement - because you can potentially write one page or 15 pages like a full grant.

one page of statement of research


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How to provide codes to reviewer without making it public
I wish to provide codes and data to reviewer along with manuscript at the time of submission. I can upload the codes on a public repository, but it will bring it in public domain, I want to provided the codes only when the paper is accepted.
What is the standard practice?
My search directs me towards repositories: Dryad, Figshare and Zenodo. Which one of them provides secure code upload OR limited access?

What's wrong with general purpose file sharing tools (like Dropbox or Google Drive)?

@MJeffryes, I do not know? I do not know what is the practice?

Many, if not all, journals allow the authors to upload confidential materials to the reviewers along with the manuscript.

Did you ask the editor or contact person at the journal about that?

no, I thought it would be naive to ask, i thought it should be similar throughout all publishers

no... hundreds of lines

@MJeffryes general purpose file sharing tools are useful just to give a file to someone, but for research data one also needs reliable long-term archiving with a DOI link (to make it citeable), which these tools don't offer.

@Guillaume you don’t need a long term archive for supplying materials privately to the reviewers. Which is what this question is about.

Possible duplicate of How can I anonymously store supplemental research data that I submit with papers?

As others have mentioned, some venues offer an option of submitting additional material.
If not, you have two options.

Include your code as a single file into your submission in the PDF/A-3 format. (I do not recommend this option that much, though, since special software is required.)
Put your code on a public site as a password-protected archive. Most compressors such as zip and rar allow you to encrypt and compress.  Put the archive on a public site but give the password only along with the submission. E.g.

Bibliography
[S18] Smith, J., Example codes, 2018, http://www.example.com/example.zip, protected with the password example_password.

Edit: This gives away the reviewer's identity. (Not Suitable)
I am not sure if this is the standard practice but it might be of interest to you:
Assuming you have a CS (or related) background and also that your reviewer also would be in a CS related field:
GitHub does provide the ability to have private repositories. You can also add collaborators, to whom you want to grant access to, via their GitHub username or email. (Also, GitHub also provides free private repositories for as long as you are a student. See GitHub Student Pack)
If you are not a student, you can use BitBucket, another version control system that offers free private repositories.

How would you preserve reviewer anonymity with this?

Correct. I now realize this does give away the reviewer's identity. This should not be done. I have edited my answer. Thanks, @Wrzlprmft.

The presented method is a little bit more complex but, in my personal opinion, very close to an optimal solution as it solves additional issues. Since you may have a CS or related background, this may be technically viable for you.
This question has two components:

How to permanently publish material
How to limit access to this material during review

The first question is especially difficult to solve since the costs, URLs, and availability of services like Dropbox may be subjected to change. Perhaps not this year, but let's say in a few years. However, you want your material to be available permanently but cannot update the URL in the paper.
Limiting access during review is solved by using an encrypted file or by some sort of login/password, before downloading is allowed. If you have several large datasets, the "encrypted file" solution is often not viable, since you do not want to have a link for each (encrypted) dataset in the paper (e.g., you have 10 datasets, each 50MB => 10 links). In this case you also do not want to have a large 500MB file that someone has to download, just to look into a single dataset.
All in all, I was not satified with the available services and solutions since they did not guarantee that the URLs are permanent and the did not have a "login" feature.
I came up with an own solution:

The URL in the paper points to one of my (personal) URLs. This is also safe in case of changing institutions. However, you can still have your dataset at some other domain, the URL in the paper is just a forwarder/redirect. If the location of the data changes, you can simply update the target of the forwarder/redirect.
During review, I uploaded the files to a server and enabled a simple login (htaccess-based). The files are all listed in this folder, but to get access to the folder you need the login.
In the paper, I added the following note:

We provide supplementary material at
  https://science.[mydomain].de/paperXYZ
The material includes all required scripts for experiments ABC and XYZ.
Restricted access during review:
Username: review Password: [password]

I explicitily state that the restricted access only applies to review, so we are willing to publish this data together with the paper.
While this comes with some effort, this method worked very well during review and also afterwards as the paper is publicly available, now.

If you have access to the server logs, they would revel the IP adress of anyone downloading the files, which could refeal the identity of the reviewer. It could also raise doubts by the reviewers that you might change the files during the review process. Better to ask the editor to post a copy of your files on a server that they control.


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Is a supervisor a not good one if they don't provide you with a realistic project?
By realistic I mean - has no funding for suggested research, has no equipment for said research and because of all of this your program turns out to be 2x longer than the university advertises it to be. I just wonder - is this normal?
Also please consider their side of the story as well; maybe they thought they would receive funding, maybe they thought equipment would arrive faster, or that there would be other options available, etc.
Does this make them a poor advisor? Is this normal to hire students like this?
Edit: I’ll try to provide a bit of context but I’ll try to keep it short.
My supervisor forced me out of his lab 4 months ago . It was such a traumatic experience for me that I’m going through therapy right now and knowing it wasn’t 100% my fault helps me deal with my feelings and trauma. Looking for someone to just say: hey maybe this wasn’t exactly how PhD studies should go. trust me it will help me in my heeling process . That’s all I’m looking for.
He hired me as a student but had no funded projects at the time. He proposed some project which he said he intended on applying for funding some months after I started. Well long story short he didn’t. Never communicated anything with me either, I ended up presenting this said project to the university, my committee , pretty much everyone who was part of my training. It wasn’t possible to work on this project without the funding. Almost 2 semesters after I started he changed it and gave me a different project, one which we didn’t have any equipment for. He constantly had excuses as to why he couldn’t order the equipment: he didn’t have time, he thought there were options available, not having the equipment wasn’t a big issue (but we needed it for the project to run), not high enough on his priority list, etc, etc. Eventually 5 semesters into the program we started collecting data, but by this time he had lied to me multiple times (for example he said equipment was ordered when it wasn’t),he lied to my committee what I was working on (his said that he had intended on having me work on the stuff he told my committee but he just didn’t have time to explain to me what exactly the work entailed), I have many other examples of other things that he too intentionally or not lied about.
I have been told I’m prone to easily being gaslit. I genuinely still don’t know if all stuff he told me is just one bad coincidence after another or whether he just didn’t care for getting me through the PhD program.
I was in the program for about a year when I was getting extremely anxious about the whole thing. It was a 3yr program and he constantly made excuses as to why he couldn’t get to the papers I submitted to him (I wanted feedback), he had excuses why he let me work on some old data but didn’t have time to send me the full dataset, he had excuses why when I’d go on a short holiday he would schedule multiple workshops with the rest of the lab to teach them about the methods we use (it was a new lab and we were all new), he had excuses why the other PhD student in my lab needed 2-3x meetings with him a week and why she needed to receive all our lab projects (not just the ones going into her thesis but ALL other projects as well). Somehow he had time to provide her with feedback on her papers. I first worked on a project that had no funding then worked on a project with no equipment, which I couldn’t move forward. He asked me to stay home and read literature while we waited for approval and funding. He told me if I so wanted to also learn some of the methods to come to the university after hours so that I don’t disturb the other students when they need to use the computers with the software we use in the lab. He sent a mail to everyone in the lab to tell them that I had least priority to the computers. But it wasn’t just that - our staff also worked during office hours so the lab members had access to the staff if they had any quick questions. He too drove to the university to provide support. But I worked 5-midnight so none of that was available to me. All this put a huge strain on our relationship. We didn’t trust each other. Eventually (at the 1.5yr mark with no data) he came to meetings and completely ignored me. We constantly fought because I felt like I had nothing to discuss with him during meetings , obv with no data I couldn’t show him anything. I felt isolated the way I worked. I felt helpless. I felt like he didn’t care. After a year and a half when finally all funding had come in and equipment was purchased and arrived, he let me go through 2 data collection days and told me to leave. The project is projected to last another 4 years which fits perfectly with the timeframe of a new student in the lab. The project is in collaboration with 4 other universities , all of which started recruiting PhD students now. Not 2 years ago.
People often ask me if I had any differences in demographics compared to the rest of the lab. Yes, I do. I don’t know whether that had anything to do with the situation or not. Part of me feels like not really, it’s just an unfortunate situation but the other part of me feels like - if it was indeed an unfortunate situation instead of providing side projects to the other PhD student in the lab maybe he could have provided me with a single funded project? I don’t know.
I had a scholarship and was satisfying all program reqs up to that point.
Again, looking for some - this doesn’t sound fully normal. Or it does. Looking for a bit of comfort, I guess. I’m sorry for the long post.

You've done an excellent job of adding important details and clarifying your question; thank you!

It sounds like you had a very difficult experience and it was not normal at all. To enable people to give useful answers, some parts of your answer would benefit from clarification ...

... "he came to meetings and completely ignored me" Do you mean meetings with just the two of you? He just sat there and literally ignored you? If it was a bigger group, do you mean you said things and he literally ignored them, as though you weren't there? "I have many other examples of other things that he too intentionally or not lied about." The phrase "too intentionally" doesn't make sense, and If it wasn't intentional, it wasn't lying.

I added an answer, I hope you'll find it helpful. Still, I would be remiss if I didn't suggest that you [edit] your question. You did a good job lengthening it to provide enough detail for people to answer. But now it's a little too far in the other direction -- if you can reduce the length by half while keeping most of the "concrete" details, you'll probably get some better answers.

@Oliver882 I think "other things that he too intentionally or not lied about" was intended to mean "other things that he also lied about, whether intentionally or not."

Thank you Andreas. Yes indeed that’s what I meant to say. I’m sorry, English is not my first language. I don’t know whether he intentionally lied , or there was some sort of misunderstanding between him and the personal ordering equipment for example - but there were so many instances in which what he said didn’t add up to the truth that I just feel like he knew he was lying but didn’t realize what that would mean in terms of the overall progress of the project (it was slow).

@Oliver882 we had meetings with the broader team for example , during which we would discuss who is responsible for what. He’d come to those meetings and before their start he would ask the masters student how she was doing, the nurses and how they were doing, etc etc. He walked passed me and never asked anything and even when I asked him how he was doing he would say okay and move away. It’s not the type of thing you notice but if you paid attention it was obvious he didn’t communicate with me. This was our first meeting with the team so I don’t have what to compare this with.

As in - I can’t say if things were different in the beginning and changed or whether it was always like that.

hey maybe this wasn’t exactly how PhD studies should go. trust me it will help me in my heeling process. That’s all I’m looking for.... But I worked 5-midnight so none of that was available to me.

This is definitely not how PhD studies should go. It's true that there is some uncertainty with hiring -- it's tricky to hire late enough that we're reasonably sure that the contract will be signed, but early enough that the staff can hit the ground running once the contract is in place. But when we end up with someone in your situation, the solution is to find something else useful for you to work on in the interim. This "useful" thing might not be our top priority, so if computers are limited, I could understand limiting your access. But having you work 5-midnight on an ongoing basis, and deliberately scheduling team events when you can't attend, is neither normal nor appropriate.

he let me go through 2 data collection days and told me to leave.

As an outsider, it is very difficult to guess what was really going on here. I won't hazard a guess, though given his erratic behavior up until this point (and your apparent willingness to try to make this work despite his outrageous behavior), I am inclined to say that this is about him, not about you.

The project is in collaboration with 4 other universities , all of which started recruiting PhD students now. Not 2 years ago.

Yes, sounds like he jumped the gun here. I wonder if he had another project in mind (which didn't get funded), or if he thought this contract would go through much faster than it did. Either way, the fact that the senior colleagues started hiring so much later is good evidence that your advisor's judgment is not sound.

People often ask me if I had any differences in demographics compared to the rest of the lab. Yes, I do.

Hard to say. I'd hate to assume this was the reason, but it is hard to imagine why else he (apparently) treated you so much worse than everyone else. I suppose it could be about the timing, or a bad first impression, or some other factor. But, from the information you've presented, I certainly don't see anything you could have done differently (except perhaps leaving sooner!). One way or the other, I hope you put this behind you and find a better outcome.

I don’t know if it was deliberate or not. It’s just a bit strange to me that he decided to schedule 3 different workshops because he ‘rushed to do it before the interns had to leave’. That’s what he said during the lab meeting when he said they had 3 different workshops the week I was gone. But one of the workshops was also recorded for the one intern that couldn’t make it - so it tells me that that intern either knew about the workshops and asked for the recording or didn’t and he did it from the goodness of his heart. I wasn’t invited to any and the recording was in a different language.

Thank you a lot! It means a lot!

Happy to help. Though your mention of "a different language" is interesting. Doesn't change anything I wrote, but it did jump out to me because we have had some past questions on this site where English-speaking students studied in non-Western countries; some cases went fine, but others encountered some difficulties and reported being treated quite differently from the domestic students.

Anecdotally from what I see is that many of the English students have some sort of issues with their supervisors. We were 4 English students In the entire department. The only one that I know that doesn’t, her supervisor speaks the local language but is not from the country where we studied. The other one had a similar situation to mine with her first supervisor (although her first supervisor was very well known for being racist there’s even articles on the internet about that guy , I’m surprised she didn’t Google it). The 4th one just started, she’s still new although I heard

Her supervisor was upset with her because she would show up late to the lab for a month after her dad passed away. I’m not sure my supervisor is like the rest of them but statistically if I look at it, it’s mostly English students having some sort of the problems I described. Also - I know that at some point I really couldn’t take it anymore - the isolation, the consistent ‘I don’t have time (to look at papers or go over methods with me)’ and I started questioning him so I know I have a part in how it ended but what I described in my post mostly happened before I ever said anything.


text:
Should I apply to PhDs in the US (theoretical physics)?
I am a Cambridge Mathematics undergraduate (third year) and I want to be a theoretical physicist (I am taking the relevant courses, research experience, etc). I am confident I can get into Part III, but not sure if I could get accepted into an Oxbridge PhD. I would start my PhD in October 2021, so if I want to go to the States I should start thinking about GREs soon.
Should I consider applying to US top schools?
The application process would we quite time-consuming, but I am not sure I would end up going to the US over other European universities. Some points I am considering about grad school in the States are:

Longer (5-6 yrs) PhDs compared to Europe (3-4 yrs), it seems better to save 2 years. (Although I am young, so it may be good to have some stability before postdocs)
Coursework required may overlap with my Part III
Expensive (?)
If I do not get into an Oxbridge PhD, then I probably would not get into a top US school either. In that case, I think I would prefer a second-class European university than a second-class US university. And if get into Oxbridge, I would be more than happy to stay. Hence, with this reasoning, either way, I should not bother about applying to the US.

I think it is relevant to note that I would be 21 at the start of the PhD.
EDIT:
To clarify, my main question is not what are my chances of getting in, rather if it is worth doing a (longer) PhD in the US instead of somewhere in Europe (probably not Oxbridge).

PhD students in STEM fields are normally funded in the US, via some combination of teaching assistantship / research assistantship / fellowship, which would cover tuition and a reasonable stipend to cover the cost of living.  So you can cross "expensive" off your list, more or less.

A longer PhD is better if you want to develop a publication record for an academic career.  A shorter PhD will help you get a high paying non-academic job faster.

"If I do not get into an Oxbridge PhD, then I probably would not get into a top US school either."  No, it is partly random.

I think that the only issue here is that you intend to change fields. You will need to show a US institution that you have adequate background in needed physics topics to begin advanced study. But you may be fine there also, depending on your course of study.
The reason that the US degree takes longer is that it makes fewer assumptions about the candidate's background on entry. A doctoral program (here) normally requires some advanced coursework leading to comprehensive (qualifying) examinations. So, there is some opportunity to make up for missed subjects, provided that you can convince a department to take you. Letters of recommendation might be essential, especially if they can speak to your readiness to switch fields.
And, you might be able to get into a top program (depending), since the entrance requirements are a bit less than for Oxbridge, which has a different educational system. In particular, an undergraduate degree in UK is normally more specialized than one in US, whereas most students here can enter doctoral programs with only that less specialized undergraduate degree.

Following your edits, I can only add that the decision about whether it is "worth it" is personal and can only be answered given your own preferences. Weigh the plus and minus aspects of each decision as you would for any important one. You are unlikely to suffer any major setback to your career no matter which way you jump.

I think that would not be an issue for me, basically, now in third year all the courses I am taking are theoretical physics. (I know it is a weird thing, cambridge has a lot of physics available for maths students )

Go for it. Apply and ye shall learn.


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Is it self-plagiarism, new paper using the original paper as a template
I am writing a new paper based on my old paper. They are very similar, but different in three 1) They study the different problems. 2) The method changed 50%. 3) They have totally different experiments.
I think the new paper should be considered innovative and publishable.
However, due to the similarity of these two papers, I want to use my old paper as the template for convenience.  I have rewritten the language and remade the figures and tables based on the original paper, so I can guarantee that basically nothing is the same. There are maybe at most 5 identical sentences.
But, anyone who has read the two articles carefully will know that they are highly similar. So is it counted self-plagiarism? Is it dangerous to do so? What is your advice on this?

Don't do that. Don't write a new paper by modifying an old one until it is entirely different.
Not for plagiarism reasons - the reason is that it will almost certainly hurt the presentation of the new paper. Start from scratch, and the presentation will be much more natural for the new paper. In my experience starting from something to make something else - and be it even a shortened version of a paper - rarely gives the best result, and is typically quite far from it.
(As a comparison, it is extremely hard to fix a badly written paper carefully - it is much easier to rewrite it from scratch. Otherwise, you will always bound to the old structure.)

I respect your opinion. However, as a beginner, I found it easier to revise than start from scratch. In my limited experience, I am better at refining the past instead of building something totally new. Personally, I think it depends on writing experience; experienced writers can build something solid quickly, so writing from scratch uninfluenced by a priori knowledge can be better suited to a new task.

I think if you want to learn from the structure of a paper, read it, try to understand the structure, and then start from scratch, following the structure. Don't work your way by changing the existing paper piece by piece. Both the result and the learning effect will be less. -- But yes, it will be easier.

Given your points 1-3 it seems unlikely that anyone would consider it self plagiarizing based only on the structure. The exception would be if your structure were, somehow, creative or innovative and contributed to the scientific/academic advance of the paper.
A lot of papers have the same, more or less, traditional structure. There are even templates for such things. It seems like you are just using a different template. I don't see any issue.

Can I modify my own previous or someone else's figure to fit my paper? By modify I mean, I use the same format (color\structure) but change everything inside.

Graphics have other considerations as they can be considered creative works on their own. Reusing your own shouldn't be a problem, but for anything creative by another you need citations and possibly permission due to copyright. But it is impossible to say specifically since the details matter. But some graphical layouts are common knowledge and standard practice, so aren't bound by copyright or other rules.

@dawen If MATLAB/matplotlib/ggplot/Excel default color usage was considered plagiarism, oh boy... I can't help but to worry about "use the same format but change the rest" bit though: if it is indeed the case, you are just learning to do good typesetting, no plagiarism there. If you see someone and think to yourself "damn, they are absolutely rocking that black and orange combo, I should pick something of sorts for myself" that's fine. If you instead copy their whole outfit and change a tiny detail in each piece of it (the way students like to do to avoid plagiarism charges)... Ouch.


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Should I do another master following with a PhD or do a PhD directly
My situation is that I already hold a Master's degree in computer science (in machine learning specifically), I apply for some doctoral schools but haven't got any offers yet.
During my master's study, I have built some background in coding and some machine learning area knowledge. However, I do not have enough research experience to start or to find a good Ph.D. topic independently.
Here are my ideas,

I can take another Master's degree in applied mathematics (I will probably do it in Europe). After I collect enough background, I will do a Ph.D., and hopefully, by that time I will start a good Ph.D. topic.

I can do a Ph.D. directly. Even if I may be not very interested in the given Ph.D. topic.

which track should I choose?

Hi @dawen and welcome.  Your title seemed to say something different to the body of your question, so I've edited the former.  Feel free to correct my edit if I got it wrong.

This will depend a lot on where you are planning to do your PhD.

In my personal opinion, you should not do another Master. You should be better off trying to find a suitable PhD position. Also in most cases a PhD takes about 5 years which is plenty of time to learn the maths. It is not required to know everything when you start a PhD. There are many many sources to learn the missing knowledge from online courses, youtube, lectures which are put on the web etc.. Doing another Master is probably just a waste of time.

I am thinking about following another Master's degree in applied maths...The courses include measure-theory based probability and more challenging statistics, in which I am interested.

You don't need another degree to research the theoretical aspects of machine learning (instead of the application). During research, you can study any aspect of mathematics that are necessary and your supervisor et al. can help you.

which track should i consider ?

The theoretical aspects of machine learning. Perhaps with a supervisor that is also interested in applied machine learning, so that you can switch, should you want to.

What is the value of a degree? It proves two things, one you have a certain set of knowledge or skills and two you can do work at a certain level. So a second degree is worth less than the first because you've already proven you can do work at that level. The only value of the second degree is learning the new knowledge. But you could get that knowledge directly during your PhD instead of doing a masters first. So I'd say go straight for the PhD.


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PhD: Research Proposal vs. Statement of Purpose for Australian Universities
I've learned that when applying to STEM PhD programs in Australia, you are typically required to draft a research proposal for your potential advisor. This differs from North American universities, where a Statement of Purpose (SoP) is usually required.
My question is: What is the difference between a research proposal and a Statement of Purpose? Additionally, are there any examples of a PhD research proposal draft that I could refer to?

I don't have a sample, but the SoP is more general and has a longer perspective than a Research Proposal (RP).
In the US, a student in a doctoral program isn't normally ready to begin research, having only a bachelors, so the SoP gives a more general idea of what the student wants to specialize in, with much less specificity than a research proposal. It should also say something about career goals (IMO). A student here will normally start with classwork and doesn't always have a dissertation advisor at the beginning, but selects one near or after passing qualifying exams (most fields). The purpose is to convince a committee that you have set a direction. They will compare that with the CV, transcripts, and letters of recommendation to determine if the goals are reasonable and achievable.
For students who are starting a program, especially in programs that require a masters, that expects research to begin almost immediately, the RP has to be much more detailed. What problem, specifically, do you wish to attack, or which papers do you think you can extend; things like that. In some fields, a specific hypothesis might be needed along with some words about (general) methodology. This seems to be what you need in Australia and, for example, Germany. Convince the supervisor that you are ready to start on a particular research proposal. Don't be too grandiose. You probably shouldn't attack classic unsolved problems.
There might be places where something less is required in a RP, but probably not as general as a (US) SoP.

A research proposal is expected to be an actionable document, so it's far more concrete that a SOP.  Not just contribution to knowledge and methodology but timelines, expected ethics approvals, funding, training, relationships with industry, .... Some oz unis are happy with 2000 words covering the highlights, others want a 10000 word plan. There's plenty of .edu.au websites with heading outlines and content checklists. See if your uni has one.


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Can I Submit My Accepted Abstract to Another Journal?
I recently had an abstract accepted for a special issue of a journal. However, after some consideration, I think another journal might be a better fit for my work. Before I proceed, I wanted to ask if anyone has experience with this or knows whether it is procedurally acceptable to withdraw the abstract and submit it elsewhere.
The abstract has only been accepted, and I have not submitted the full manuscript yet. Would withdrawing the abstract from the special issue and submitting it to another journal violate any norms or expectations?

I am assuming abstract submissions for this special issue have closed?

Standard and ethical practice is to submit to one journal at a time. If you wish to submit elsewhere, withdraw the submission first. A note to the editor is all you need to do unless you have already signed over your copyrights, in which case they need to agree.
Multiple submissions wastes resources, namely the time and effort of those involved, especially reviewers. Moreover, in a case like this, leaving the editors thinking that you are still committed, means that "space" is being saved for you that might go to another.  If lots of people do this it negatively affects everyone.
Don't get a "norm-breaking" reputation with editors and the people who donate time and effort to make the system work.


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Practice for publications in foreign language
I'm an assistant professor in a non-English country. I work in control system and signal processing. I write publications in my native language. But I want  to get experience in publications in English. But I think my English is not so good. So I have small questions. Does anyone know courses or sites where I can practice? I know about Arxiv.org, but I am not sure it's best practice for my problem.

Bear in mind a lot of journals where the editors don't speak English as first language often use grammar checking software at proof reading stage of an article, so the level required of grammar and vocabulary of the article which you submit might be a lot less than what you think it is.

I am personally not aware of any open online courses although I would be surprised if none existed. I can, however, point you to some other good resources. First there is the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) which has guides and resources for teaching so it is not a course in itself but contains very useful material. I can also recommend a couple of books on writing in English for non-native English writers.
The first is

Robert A. Day and Nancy Sakaduski, 2011. Scientific English. A guide for scientists and other professionals. (publisher link)
Hilary Glasman-Deal, 2010. Science Research Writing For Non-Native Speakers Of English: A Guide for Non-Native Speakers of English. Imperial College Press (link from publisher page)

and then of course

William Strunk Jr and E.B. White, (many editions over the years). The Elements of Style. Longman/Pearon. (publisher link)

What I do for languages is to read a book out loud (in Spanish etc.) whilst listening to a native speaker talking about something on a Youtube video and then try to copy their pronunciation.  If I see a word I don't know, I write it down in a notebook and then look it up.
However, whilst this is good for vocabulary, it's also important to try and get feedback from real people (preferably native speakers).  You could join an English language learning group on Facebook and then try to match with people.

There are 2 approaches to learning academic writing in English and I'd recommend both of them.
Read
The best way to learn the conventions for academic writing in your field (and it does vary between fields). You should read a lot of publications to gain familiarity of how to explain complex topics in your field. The more you read, the more confident you'll get with writing in English yourself.
Get Feedback
You can also improve by getting feedback on your writing. It can be difficult if you are in a country where English is not the national language. Still you should be able to get friends and colleagues to give you supportive feedback. You can even get your students to contribute to papers and learn from each others English. Another option is to hire a proofreader to check one of your manuscripts. You can use any suggestions and edits as an opportunity to learn why it needs to be changed. Every time you get a proofreader to help you, you can improve on your writing skills.
Your writing does not have to perfect to submit articles to journals. As long as they can be understood in terms of the science, they can be reviewed. Minor issues with grammar and terminology can be sorted out during the review process. Reviewers should point out minor issues that need to specifically addressed, such as confusing or ambiguous sentences. These can be sorted out during revisions and resubmissions.

There are many ways to learn language and you will need to experiment the way that works best for you. The "best" English used in articles is actually not very fancy as scientific communication needs to be as understandable as possible. Since you already know quite a bit of English, judging from your question, the next step is to eliminate wrong phrasing and specific grammar errors. This is best done using feed-back, that is, writing a paper or a summary of a paper in English and have someone edit it. That is quite painful. You need to first find the person and maybe pay them. Then you have to listen to criticism of something you worked hard to write. But it is worth while. There are now also more editorial houses etc that offer help with this editing.


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Using ChatGPT to paraphrase cited texts and personal texts for assignments
I study ATHE Level-4 Diploma in Computing, regulated by UK based Ofqual. Since March 2023, quillbot(a type of paraphrasing tool) kind of works slow on both my home network and college network. The two locations both use literally the same ISP, so I guess this is expected. Now, since then, I have been using ChatGPT-3.5 to paraphrase my own texts and cited texts for my assignments. I, of course, do provide citations in my assignments in Harvard-Anglia Reference Style
Will this be any problem for turnitin? Will this cause any issue for me? I couldn't find any information regarding this, and even my instructor is confused with this. Not knowing where to go regarding this dilemma, I asked it here in Stack Exchange.

We both use literally the same ISP - Who is we?  Also, I am quite confused by your question so I'm not surprised your instructor is too.

@Kimball, Read again. I wrote "Since March 2023, quillbot(a type of paraphrasing tool) kind of works slow on both my home network and college network. We both use literally the same ISP, so I guess this is expected."
By this I meant that the internet service provider my college uses is the same one as my personal network's.

Too much jargon, unclear text. Please rephrase.

The lack of clarity in your question shows why you should not use AI to do your school work---because it will prevent you from developing reading and writing skills.

I'm not sure why you would be using quillbot to paraphrase your own work, unless you were attempting to avoid detection for self-plagiarism.
Some students use ChatGPT to improve the flow and grammar of text they write themselves, and to give them feedback on their writing, so that they might write better text the first time in the future.  This kind of use of ChatGPT is one that we can't comment on here, and whether it is acceptable or not will depend on your instructional policies.
I would recommend not using ChatGPT to paraphrase your sources, even if you cite them. Originality in your writing exists on a spectrum and encompasses several aspects beyond just outright plagiarism. If you cite your sources, then you are not technically plagiarising them.
However, ask yourself why you do not just directly quote - why bother to paraphrase? Just stringing together a series of quotes leads to something I call "quotation lego".  You are asked to do work at university in order to demonstrate that you understand a topic, but you can use a quote without really understanding what it means.
It takes some level of understanding to be able to paraphrase a source. At the very least, you need to understand the grammatical constructions they used.
Using ChatGPT to paraphrase your sources doesn't require this understanding, it is really just quoting, but then trying to hide it - it is fundamentally dishonest. Of course, if you don't fundamentally understand what is being paraphrased, then you are probably not in a position to say whether ChatGPT has preserved the meaning
Of course you can paraphrase a source without fully understanding it. Thats why I tell my students that even paraphrasing sources themselves is bad practice, even if they cite them. Ideally you should write your content yourself, from scratch, using your own structure, analogies etc, citing the sources of the ideas you are discussing - the best way to do this is with the original source no where near you when you are writing.
As for whether you'll be caught - I couldn't say. Turnitin in the UK currently doesn't use GPT detection, but that will almost certainly change in the near future. As it currently isn't used, no one knows what it will and won't pick up. But trying to outsmart Turnitin is the wrong approach. If you think that you would be in trouble if Turnitin did pick it up, then you probably shouldn't be doing it anyway.
Ask yourself - why are you taking this course? The only good answer is to learn. Finding shortcuts to learning and understanding defeats the purpose of paying for the course in the first place.

Hey Mr. Ian. I know I expressed absurdity by writing this post. Believe me. I am learning as I write my assignments. Here is the thing. During my first month, I never rephrased my own texts and other writers' texts. I only cited other writers and gave proper references. However, as my instructor sent my assignments to Turnit in, it showed more than 30% plagiarism (even on my own texts). That is why my instructor said to paraphrase every texts. -_-

I do understand what quillbot and chatgpt paraphrases with my texts, and I have no interest in being dishonest with my work. Truth to be told, my instructor put me in a tight spot with his words regarding turnitin's plagiarism reports even when I use my own texts.

Your instructor is deficient then - they should be manually checking the turnitin matches to see if they are real plagiarism or not. In any case, the answer to your actual question is above. Current turnitin doesn't identify GPT text, but it may do in the future.

Turnitin is beside the point. It will sometimes spot paraphrases, and sometimes not, but what matters is the human who is marking things. When I am marking I am looking for evidence of understanding, not simply that somebody can give me a list of facts with citations. If you want to learn - or, if you want a good grade rather than a just-about-passing one - then make sure you understand the topic, and then write about it from your knowledge.