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How many assistant professor or postdoc jobs do people usually apply for in mathematics?
Assuming you want a good chance of getting at least 1 offer from a research university, is applying for 20 jobs average? Is applying for 30 jobs overkill?
Would most letter writers feel hassled by having to send off letters to like 10-15 different websites, or would they expect that is normal?

This would depend strongly on the candidate and their strengths and weaknesses. For some people 20 can be overkill, for others 40 or 50 wouldn’t be enough, so I would caution you against relying on anyone’s generic estimate that isn’t based on a detailed knowledge of your specific situation.

It depends too much on the state of the economy, both the general economy and the academic economy at the time. It could be as many as hundreds spread over years. I finished at a time when there were almost no openings so it took a long time to get any position and even longer to get a good one. Moreover, what is "usual" this year might vastly different next year. Had I finished my degree two years earlier they would have been beating down my door.

I know it's not quite on topic, but it's fascinating to me how divergent the math academic and industry job markets are these days. Most math PhD graduates have to work extraordinarily hard to get a basic postdoc in a good university, but if they spend a couple of months pivoting into industry the tables are completely turned and its companies desperately competing for them. There must be some interesting economics or social science research to be done on this phenomenon!

1) Unless you have something close to an Annals level paper, I would say you should be applying for close to 100.  This probably isn't actually possible; to hit this number reasonably, you have to apply for temporary positions and for non-research oriented positions.  Think of it this way.  Positions taking applications on Mathjobs are getting something like 500 applicants.  You're probably more qualified than most applicants, but if you're in the top 100, and a position hires uniformly at random from the top 100, then you need to apply to 100 to have expected value of one job.
2) Most recommenders are willing - they're blaming the university for not taking Mathjobs applications, not you.  If you want to save your recommenders trouble at the expense of your money, you can use Interfolio, which is a company that sends out applications - including confidential letters - for you.

Whenever I hear advice about applying to a hundred jobs, I wonder how many people are remotely competitive fits for a hundred jobs, especially in mathematics. Hiring committees don't hire uniformly at random from the top 100, so it seems that applying for a lot of low-probability jobs wouldn't actually increase your chances of getting hired.

@ElizabethHenning: Low probability is not zero probability.  It's common for hiring committees to have preferences that cannot be discerned externally, so some committee might have an interest in your application for reasons you don't know about - meaning that, a priori and externally, your probability for that job looks very low.  A large number of 1% chances add up.

@ElizabethHenning: From the internal point of view, with full knowledge, you aren't competitive fits for 100 jobs.  But you don't know, out of the 100 jobs you can apply for, exactly which 10 you will actually be competitive fits for.

Traditionally math has had more open searches rather than subfield-specific searches (though this is changing somewhat based on pressure from deans).  But because of this tradition, it's harder in math than in many other fields to know which schools you're a fit for.

My opinion, which I think is far from universal, is that the tenure track and postdoc markets are quite different in this way.  Postdocs are hired to work with one or two particular faculty members, and so if there's no one close to your work at a school they're very unlikely to hire you as a postdoc.  If I'd made a list of the 10 most likely places to consider me for a postdoc, the places that were at all interested were a subset of that list.  Applying to only 10 would be unnecessarily risky, but I really don't think there's a huge difference in likelihood of success between applying to 20 postdocs and 100 postdocs.  By contrast, tenure-track hires are not expected to be as close to existing faculty, and there were several places that interviewed me that weren't on my most likely list.  Unless you're clearly in the top two or three people on the market that year (one Annals paper might not be quite enough), then you should literally apply to every single tenure-track position that you would consider taking.  20-30 places is way too few for the tenure-track market because there's just too much randomness in the process.

I'm currently chairing the search committee for a tenure track position in applied mathematics at a smaller (not R1) research-oriented university.  We received 261 applications for the position and will phone interview about 5% of these applicants.  Many of these applicants have 5 or more years of experience past the Ph.D.
The academic job market in mathematics in the US is extremely competitive at this point- more competitive than in previous searches that I've been involved in over the last 20 years.  In this context, sending out far more than 20 or 30 applications would be entirely reasonable.
I agree with others that there is a big difference between the tenure track job market, the market for non-tenure-track but permanent instructor jobs, the market for term-limited non-tenure track teaching positions, and the market for research-oriented postdocs. However, you should probably not be too narrowly focused in your search.
If you're applying through mathjobs.org, then your recommendation writers can submit their letters online without having to write a separate letter for each application that you submit.  That really isn't an issue for those positions.  There aren't very many positions that aren't taking applications through mathjobs.org and would require separate letters.

Thanks, but unfortunately, I would estimate about 25% of positions require letters outside of MathJobs.

Based on my experience, @brian-borchers has it right. It is very, very difficult to know you are a fit for a particular position. I've seen job ads which are virtually open as to research area, but present faculty members told me the hiring committee could only hire in specific area since it was "their" turn. "Fit" is very important, especially for smaller schools. After all, people are hiring someone they will work and socialize with for decades.

The existing answers all seem to focus on the US job market, so I will try to put a perspective for the European job market and the differences here. Most US maths jobs are posted on MathJobs and one can apply there. This is convenient but also means that it is very easy to apply for a lot of jobs and so this is what people do.
Math jobs in Europe are not all aggregated in a single place. You need to find the job adverts on different job sites (possibly country specific ones), in some newspapers and on department websites. This also means the application process is much less uniform and each individual application will require a lot more work than a few clicks on mathjobs.org.
Knowing that, applying to 20 or 30 positions is sufficient, provided you actually are a reasonably good fit for each of them. In fact, it can be quite hard to even find that many positions that you are qualified for. For tenure track positions the teaching language is also a factor, so you can't just blindly apply all over the EU as in the US.

Unfortunately, it's also physically impossible to make hundreds of applications in Europe as they all require writing a response to different selection criteria, where it could take days to do one well.

@leacorv That is what I was trying to say. It is impossible to write that many applications. Fortunately it also works for you the other way round. A US institution will receive hundreds of applications for a position that all look reasonable at first glance. A Europan one will receive a lot less applications (at least of those that are worth reading in detail).

Great points!  Relatedly, there are also fewer colleges/universities in Europe (at least proportionally), since they're almost all large universities and there's nothing like the US liberal arts colleges.


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Bad relationship with PhD supervisors, should I have them as my recommenders in job applications?
I am about to submit my thesis. At the moment, I am looking for jobs, but my relationship with both of my Ph.D. supervisors is not good. Now I am facing another complication where I have to find a recommender for a job. I am too scared to get them to be my recommender, yet I will probably have a reason as to why not them.
My supervisors have shown many reactions which indicates that they dislike me, for example, scolding, ignoring emails, blaming, and talking behind my back. Nevertheless, I always act nice to them and say that I agree with them that it was all my fault.
I did not change the supervisors because of my stupidity in thinking that nobody will accept me as my research field is tiny. These results in me feeling as if they all tried to dish me off from this program, but I was too stubborn.
Edit: To give a note that I risked using one of them which turns out not as bad as I thought. Sometimes, the HR just wants someone to provide an honest feedback, and sometimes, the sup may just want an alumni

Have you asked your supervisors directly, or are you just guessing?  (And do you trust them enough to tell you to your face if they don't plan to write strong letters?)  Remember that graduating a weak student reflects badly on them; they have a selfish incentive to write strong letters on your behalf.

That is an interesting point. I see what you mean. But I am not so sure if I could trust them.  The blaming part really makes me feel betrayed so badly.

Having read another one of your other recent questions, I'll answer this by assuming (I don't actually know if this is true) that the chances of getting a helpful recommendation from your supervisors is quite low.
In that case I'd suggest you follow the same procedure as has been recommended on this site for the case where the advisor has died, that is, ask a department administrator to write a recommendation.
This case is a little different, though.  I suggest you explain frankly to the administrator that you want to work in industry, but you need a positive letter from someone connected with your department; and that there's a bad feeling between you and your supervisors.
A letter from an administrator in a situation like this probably wouldn't be glowing, but it could be enough for you to get a job in industry.  Hopefully, once you're on the job, things will go better for you and after a while your workplace supervisor will be able to give you a strong recommendation in case you want to make a lateral move.

If this is an academic job, then you need to have a candid conversation with your supervisors. Tell them you're looking for jobs and ask whether they would be able to give you a good recommendation, or if you would be better off not having their recommendation.
If this is not an academic job, the above is still a prudent approach, but your supervisor's recommendation is much less critical. So long as you can find 2-3 people willing to answer the phone and say nice things about you, you should be fine. (Most non-academic jobs require phone conversations, not letters).
By the way, I wanted also to comment on this line:

I always act nice to them and comply with that it was all my faults

At least in the US, grad students approaching graduation should strive to be the professors' peers, not their slaves. It may have been more productive to have "candid conversations" earlier in which you raised the issues you mention directly and tried to resolve them. In particular, it's not necessarily good to accept that everything was "all your fault" -- it's OK to politely push back when you think you're right, or at least ask questions to prevent such situations from recurring. Good luck!

Yes. Thanks for pointing it out.  Only if I could turn back time, I will set up the boundary or change the sup panel entirely. Now, they messed up my progress and destroy my confidence so much.

You really need them to recommend you for a job so for me you need to have a dialogue with them and ask them to recommend you, tell them how sorry you are . Good luck

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If I fail PhD, what is the appropriate way to present myself in CV for jobs in industry?
I am in a terrible situation. My two supervisors said that my thesis (about to be submitted) is borderline because I do not have any published paper (two submissions only). It is because I tried hard to submit A/A* journal.
My program does not need the paper though, but it sorts of culture and expectation in Computer sciences where everyone normally has a published paper.
I did think about quitting before or resorting to a Master, but I cannot do that anymore because I am in my third year in an Australian uni.
Edit: Got a job that is willing to pay me a Ph.D. salary before having my Ph.D. result. In my CV, I did mention that I had submitted my thesis, but not know the result yet. And yes, they asked why I move to industry? The reason was that I want to acquire industrial experiences which will be more challenging that can result in real-world contribution.

Hi Gap, welcome to Academia.SE. You asked two questions, one about your CV, and one about who to put down as recommenders - I suggested an edit to take out the second one so that the community can focus on one question at a time, but you can ask your second question as another, new question.

I didn't understand why you can't get the Masters.  Have you checked that with a department administrator?

@aparente001 It seems to be a rule here. I can  only do it before moving to the Ph.D. candidate.

@GapSntin yes I think you cannot move from phd candidate to master, you can howerever move as phd student to master. Try to publish in some fringe, open access journals such as MBTI or similar

@FGSn - could you double-check that?  Normally when a student isn't given the PhD, but the decision comes late in the process, a Master's is given instead.  My impression is that this is pretty standard.  I suggest you try to negotiate this.

You are not in a terrible situation at all, just not in a massively good one. You have written two papers. Your supervisors think you have a chance of passing. You are about to submit, so you have done most of the work (learning to be a researcher, and writing up).

First of all, read the rules and procedures of your program carefully from start to finish. Don't make major life decisions over what you heard secondhand. For one thing, as others here, I am skeptical that you would leave empty-handed. Traditionally, failing a PhD means you get a Master's as a consolation prize and shown the door. Also note that you have rights beyond your department's decisions. They might want for their department to be special but it is generally not completely within their power to make up their own rules.
Second of all, if you do want to finish, it sounds like you are in good shape. "Borderline" is a positive answer to me, you have one foot in the winning side. You did produce papers, they just weren't accepted yet. Resubmit elsewhere. That count as publications "in process". Ask your committee what additional analysis will make your thesis passable. If you fail the defense, you can redo it after improvements. If you are not up against a hard graduation deadline you can continue trying. Remember research is a field that sometimes (often actually) required dogged tenacity.
Finally to actually answer your question, in industry they want to know your skills and accomplishments apart from the school graduation requirements (about which they care little). Without even a Master's you presumably aren't looking for research jobs. So they probably expect no more than a short resume (the rule of thumb used to be one page per ten years experience) which would devote a couple bullets tops to what you did in your years at school. E.g., used method A to address problem B.
As for interviews and generally framing things, you can tell them pretty much anything. Google around and you should find many good ideas. The critical thing is to be positive and avoid the appearance of being a quitter. For example, you decided research wasn't for you and you wanted to do "real work" (particularly the kind of work they do at the place who asked you the question). Or even just that you couldn't take being a starving student anymore. Or you didn't want to overspecialize your career in research. It's pretty easy to convince people who also didn't want a PhD, that you had a good reason for not wanting one yourself. This isn't really a question to ask academics, but industry professionals instead. Note that these answers are actually not lies, since you could have continued to work towards a doctorate if you really wanted to but are apparently deciding not to.

You can put "admitted to candidacy" or "all but dissertation" or something like that in your CV.
In the the interview, you can say that you got a lot out of your studies, but that you've realized that the academic life is not for you.  Be prepared to give one reason if necessary, and choose something as a reason that makes you look sympathetic, for example, "I found out I like working on real world problems, more than on theoretical problems that have no connection to the way people actually interact with computers."  I made that up -- it's just an example to give you an idea how it's possible to present oneself in a positive light.
Don't let them get the idea that you were extremely close to defending when you decided to leave, or that you failed the defense.  Let them think that you broke up with your department, not that your department broke up with you.
But take the high road when speaking of your department.  In other words, don't wash any dirty laundry in public.  Don't say anything negative about the department or anyone in it.  If they press you for more information, just go into broken record mode.
The easiest way to pull all of this off is to imagine that a year or two have gone by since you left the program, and you're talking to them about something that was a minor headline in last year's newspaper.

The question in the title is better than the specific one asked in the body of your post. (By better, I mean more in line with the aim of this site, as it is useful to many people in doctoral programs).
How to present ourselves to employers after a failed PhD is something many of us have pondered in moments of self doubt. To be clear, we are talking about truly failing (as determed by the committee/department/institution), not leaving for other reasons before finishing.
I think one possible spin to put on it, is that you've learned many, many skills and acquired a lot of knowledge over the course of your studies that will be useful in the workplace. The exact content of the dissertation itself may have been deemed inadequate or inappropriate for awarding the degree, but that does not mean that your knowledge and skills in the general field of study in which you were working are inadequate.
This argument is even stronger in an area like CS than it is in an area like (pure) math (for example). In math, to get a non-academic job I would push my research and writing skills. These skills would be hard to sell if I had failed my PhD. But in CS, you can get jobs based on things like programming skills that might be strong despite failing a thesis defense.

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Can external examiners be from research institutes?
Firstly, I understand what matter are the regulations from my own college and advice from my supervisor. I would like to ask this question more as a survey of experience and opinions.
It happens that my supervisor has suggested an external examiner that has lead a lab for numerous years, with extensive experience, knowledge and publications in the field of my thesis, who would surely be suitable in examining the quality of research work by expertise, but also one who comes from a research institute that does not use the titles "Lecturers" or "Professors".
According to the written regulations, an equivalent or higher rank is required, without specifying the nature of origin institute. As I search for more information to understand more of the general practice, I saw some writing "universities or research institutes", while oftentimes this is not specified.
It would be nice if anyone could share more on what have you seen and been thinking so far. Thank you so much!

And sure, the nominee has a PhD

I had a professor (with a PhD) direct me to a professor (without a PhD) for detailed advice (on supersonic flow :Prandtl Meyer expansion if that detail helps) as the non-PhD professor had more knowledge and exerience in the topic. So a PhD may not mean “font of all knowledge” ie an external examiner can be chosen for relevant experience and usually is.

Yes.  For universities that use external PhD examiners, typically the examiner can be from a university, non-university nonprofit/government research institution, or an industrial research laboratory.  Typically the examiner has a PhD.
University faculty are most commonly selected.

Thank you so much for your prompt response. Yes, the nominee has a PhD. Btw, mind sharing where (like which continent) you are right now? Sure no problem if you prefer to be a bit more "anonymous" haha ;)

From a UK perscpective:
Yes. External examiners can come from non-university affiliated institutions. It is normal in such situations for the supervisor/examiner to be asked to provide evidence not just that the examiner is knowledgeable in their field, but also that they understand the requirements for being awarded a PhD. The most common way to do this is to present evidence the examiner has either supervised or examined PhD students before.

Thank you very much for sharing. It makes sense for requirement on the supervision part.


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Ordering publication list in thesis
When including a list of own publications in thesis, which order would you follow?

Descending chronological order
Ascending author position
Relevance to thesis chapters
(Any other ways)

Are these publications being cited in the thesis?

Look if standard is in place at your institution. If it is about your own publications in the CV section I personally like the last at top, grouped by importance, full papers - proceedings - posters...

@mmeent Some are cited

@Alchimista Yes, I was thinking something like this. Thank you for sharing your experience/ preference :)

What is your goal, in including publications which are not cited?

@mmeent As Alchimista pointed out, I would like to include them along with cited ones on a page as part of my work during my PhD study, but those are side projects irrelevant to the topic discussed within the thesis.

Look for published papers in your field and do it like they do. Different fields have different conventions, try to follow what is common in your area. Your advisor should also be able to tell you what is usually done in your field.

Thanks. That's true and planned to do these as well

This might be field-dependent, but in electrical engineering it is common to sort references according to the order in which they are cited in the thesis. You might want to look at published theses in your field and see how they do it.

Thanks. I looked for a number of theses and people seem to have different preferences, but would like to ask for more opinions.


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non academic job opportunities for mid aged PhD
I am currently a masters student that is due to finish early next year. I have a scholarship which covers costs and pays me a modest wage up until and including PhD. I would like to do my PhD but I am concerned about the job opportunities that will be available to me after graduating due to my age and skill set. I would be in my mid 30's when graduating and would like to work in a non academic, non laboratory environment after graduating. At some time later in life I would like to return to academia but at least after graduating I would prefer to not do so.
How are somewhat older PhD's perceived by employers outside of academia ? Do they have a harder time being employed ? I have read PhD's are often considered over qualified or to focused in their knowledge making them not as desirable to employers, is this still the case ?

"Older PhD" is very misleading in your title! :)

Mid 30s is not all that old for finishing a PhD...

Age here matters much less than the perceived seniority a PhD will grant you.
I graduated at the age you plan to, and have had a straightforward time finding employment opportunities. Certainly, at all ages, having a PhD limits some entry level opportunities, as you are seen as better fitting 'senior' tracks. For these, you may not have sufficient 'real world' experience. If you have interest in rapidly transitioning from individual contributor role to management, this may not be a bad thing at all. The key, for me, has been being open with employers and flexible about role.
Notably, this may somewhat depend on the culture in your field.

This is one of the things I fear, even though I believe I a have a fairly well rounded skill set spending 7 years as a student makes me feel like I will lack the skills to transition smoothly into a role in industry. I have been trying to offset this as much as possible by doing internships at companies and trying to find any type of part time work in my field hoping that this will not only show drive and commitment but also will fill in some of those gaps in "real world" experience. Although getting internships hasn't been as difficult finding part time work has proven difficult

@dmnte: Nobody's skill set is ever "fully rounded"; even postdocs and professors continue to learn and train throughout their careers!

You'll be fine. A PhD is actually excellent preparation for success in the workplace, IMHO.


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Grant proposal: How to answer question about Promotion of equality and non-discrimination
I am working on a grant proposal. The topic of the proposal is in a technical study and do not have any direct social interaction. And the grant only provide salary for the applicant and project costs; therefore, there won't be any other recruitment.
One of the question in the grant application is to describe how the project will promote  equality and non-discrimination? I understand this question is very common in most grant applications but I am not sure how can I promote equality and non-discrimination in a pure technical project.
should I include additional social engagement plan?

This is obviously not very relevant for your grant, but to be safe I would add something along the lines of, if and when the possibility of employing someone arose in the project in general (not just under this grant), you would consider candidates based on their technical suitability, and try to have an even representation of gender/etc in the candidate list.

If you are in the US, your institution should have an IRB (Institutional Review Board) that will vet any research involving human subjects, but which can also give you advice on this. In other countries there may be an equivalent office associated with the Research Support (or similar) office.
It may be that it is enough to say "Does not apply" in your case, but you should get advice from experts.


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Is it widely followed that only some parts of academic books are taught to undergraduates?
I'm an undergraduate student studying psychology using English language in a non-English speaking country. I'm graduating soon, and I'm applying for master programs. We mostly use McGraw Hill publications for our undergraduate curriculum.
My concern is this: Our instructors teach us through slides, and books are secondary learning sources—that is if they are used at all. These abbreviated slides use the same chapters of the book, yet not all chapters are covered, in fact some courses cover as little as half of the relevant book's chapters.
Is this normal across the world?
A friend of mine told me that academic books are made to accompany both bachelor-level topics, and master-level topics, and this is why some parts were excluded for undergraduate programs. Is this correct?
I'm asking this because I don't want to get shocked when doing my masters and discover that I'm under-prepared or under-trained.

It depends on the course, the professor, and the culture. When I took numerical analysis (three times, don't ask) we didn't really follow the book explicitly.

While a little off topic, I think this answer of mine is related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28675/what-is-the-benefit-of-writing-lecture-notes-for-an-introductory-course-vs-using/28684#28684

There are some open questions : 1. Are the McGraw Hill publications copyright protected material? 2. It is a distance-education course or at a real school? 3. Why do you study psychology? and 4. (the most important question): How much do you have paid for attending the course?

Is it normal that they only cover one textbook and not all the books?

@ManuelRodriguez: Why would questions 3 and 4 be important for this question?

Not covering the entirety of a textbook is true in absolutely ever course I've ever taken, and is true of every institution I'm familiar with. However, I would not say that it is true that any given subset of sections of any given book are the ones that every professor covers; in fact, at least in the US, each professor has a wide latitude in choosing what parts of the book they want to cover, and to what extent their lectures and/or tests cover the same material as the book at all. Some professors, in some classes, prefer only to cover whats more-or-less written in the book, and some intentionally lecture on topics that are not in the book and rely on reading the book to cover other topics. Some professors even have a book only as optional reading and you don't need to read any of it.
All of the above is true at the undergraduate level, and even more true - in my experience - at the graduate level, as professors deviate even further from any available textbook.
As to some books being designed for both undergraduate and graduate levels, this varies by book. Some books are almost never used at the graduate level, and some are almost never used at the undergraduate level, and some are used in both but to different extents.
But to answer your core question: yes, it is very common not to cover the whole book, and no you shouldn't worry about it. Its always good to lightly skim through the material that isn't required, so you get an idea of what you are skipping, but generally most professors make it a point to select out the material they believe is most important and relevant and skip what they don't deem necessary. Few professors ever follow the order of the book, either, and prefer to select their own ordering - and rarely do two professors agree on what that order would best be.
And don't worry - if you end up doing anything challenging, you will always feel tremendously under-prepared and under-trained, no matter how many textbooks you've read. That just comes with the territory :)

Yes, it is common to teach a course using only parts of an associated textbook.
In particular, read the "Preface" (or "Foreword", or "To the Instructor") part of your textbook(s); it usually specifies one or more suggested course sequences, which sections are optional, which sections more strongly depend on other sections, etc.
If you're really concerned about being under-prepared, then there's nothing stopping you from just reading the other sections on your own. This itself will be a skill broadly expected in graduate school, so it's not bad to practice itself at this time.

Most textbooks simply have far too much content for a one-semester undergraduate course. So I would say, yes, this is the norm.
In some cases, instructors might cover only a rather small section of a textbook. Introduction to Algorithms (CLRS) and Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools ("Dragon book") are two good examples: while they can and are often used as undergraduate texts, the books themselves are more like handbooks and can be a valuable reference even for senior researchers. It is certainly impossible to cover much of the book in an undergraduate course in this case.


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Ethics of making students purchase lecture notes
I have a professor who has published his lecture notes in the form of a book. The only way to get access to his lecture notes is to purchase them from an off-campus bookstore. To me, this seems like a highly unethical, if not illegal, practice. Shouldn't students have access to lecture notes as part of the tuition fees that they have paid?
A common question seems to be whether we are actually required to purchase the notes. To clarify, he routinely skips teaching chapters in class and asks them to read them from the notes on our own. So yes, we have to buy the notes if we want to be taught the entire syllabus.
Edit: The notes are different from the textbook. The textbook is not really needed, while the notes are fully needed. I'm seeing people confusing the two and claiming that many professors prescribe their own textbooks for the courses. My question is to whether access to notes should be free and universal for every student in the lecture.

Professors usually require students to purchase a textbook for the course. And it may not be unreasonable to choose one of which the instructor is the author. However, the ethics of academic publishing and of academia generally in today's world have lots of complications that might make this unethical in some cases.

Highly related: Is it ethical to profit by having my students buy my textbook

@MichaelHardy A textbook is a wholly different matter. These are lecture notes that the professor uses during class. He also has a textbook which is separate from the lecture notes that I'm talking about. The lecture notes refer to the slides that are used in class while teaching.

@Anyon I did read through that answer. However, I feel this is taking it one step forward. Not only is he selling lecture notes (not a textbook, but the slides he uses to teach in class) but the material is only available at a single bookstore that is off-campus. As far as I understand, required/suggested material for courses should be available at the university bookstore, especially if it is authored by the professor themselves.

@Gummybears : But you said it was "in the form of a book". I would take that to mean a firm in the business of publishing books published it as a book.

@MichaelHardy The "book" is simply the slides printed out and bound together using a spiral binding.

@Gummybears It would certainly look better (and be more convenient) if it was available at the university bookstore, or more widely available. I.e. there'd be less risk of nepotism/collusion/potential conflict of interest. That's not (necessarily) about ethics though, but about appearances.

@Anyon I see. However, what's even more dubious is that none of the texts is listed under required/suggested materials for the course on the university website when registering for the course.

It sounds like the professor is just not very comfortable with technology, rather than being sketchy. While it’s nice if it’s all available online, the school may not require instructors to list textbooks at registration. (Students at my school get that info from the bookstore.)

@aeismail To the first point, that would be believable had the purchase of the book not included access to an electronic version as well. To the second point, apparently the bookstore is unaware of these books. They point me towards the general course prescribed book which is by Pearson, not the professor. So they have no idea as to what book the professor requires for his classes.

OK. I won’t try to figure out the motivations. However, the real issue here is if there’s a markup going on. If it’s being sold “at cost,” then there’s really nothing untoward going on.

OMG, how lucky were we. When the flood took away the textbooks in the uni's library (where one normally could lend them) the professors made a collection among themselves to find as many copies as they could and they lent us their personal copies so that we had textbooks to learn from. If I compare that with this.

You have two separate questions, with unrelated answers.  (1) Professor requires his own book (2) Students must by a book (regardless of the author).

The big question is it: when did he write the lecture notes. If he wrote them doing work time: i.e. time paid by his salary from the university, the notes could be considered property of the university. If he starts selling them without their consent, this might in fact be illegal. As a company employee I'm also not allowed to sell my work to another company. I think he is probably paid to give lectures, so in a lawsuit he'll have a hard time defending that he wrote it is his own time.

@1006a I don't think the OP has said anywhere they have to buy them (as in, the professor requires them to); but they are probably used to lecture notes being made available for free online and are surprised by this practice.

Run a friend's copy through a photocopier? That falls under "fair use" regulations in Germany at least. Or make it clear to that prof that you would by his book, but find it unfair to make students pay for a stack of slides.

@Gummybears If your professor is really skipping sections of the printed lecture notes and telling you to read them on your own, then the  printed lecture notes aren't functioning as lecture notes at all (in the sense of "a recap of what was said in lecture"), they are effectively functioning as a book. That is not rare, plenty (maybe the majority) of textbooks develop from such lecture notes.

@Gummybears: Can you please [edit] all clarifications into your question, then delete your respective comments and flag comments of others which you completely addressed as no longer needed? (Same goes to other commenters: If your comment was completely addressed, please delete it.)

I'm having difficulty determining the question that the OP wants answered. There are a lot of "?" characters in the question, but most of them follow either rhetorical statements or why questions that only the professor can answer. As the question stands, it is highly emotionally charged and sounds more like one of these. OP, can you edit the Q into a single neutral-toned question that is answerable by this community?

@shoover My bad there. I've edited it now. I think that should make it more reasonable.

(This answer is based on US university practices.  I don't know if it is directly applicable to Canada, but the two systems generally tend to be similar.)
It's hard to be sure, but this might be a practice that's old-fashioned but not unethical.
First of all:

Shouldn't students have access to lecture notes as part of the tuition fees that they have paid?

Not necessarily.  If the course requires materials that have a non-negligible cost, then typically students will be required to pay for them separately.  This includes textbooks, lab supplies, and, as in this case, custom-printed "course packets" of notes or other reading material.
Now, normally the university has its own service for printing course packets and selling them "at cost" through the university bookstore.  However, it sometimes happens that professors decide that some other bookstore or print shop can produce the packets better or cheaper, and so they have them made and sold there.  This may or may not be technically allowed by university rules, but it may be tolerated, especially if it's actually saving money for the students.  Note that in such cases, the professor normally doesn't receive any of the price of the packet; it all goes to the print shop.
So this isn't a completely unheard-of system for distributing printed material.
You could certainly ask the professor why they've chosen to do it this way.  My guess is you'll get a response like "I used to use the university bookstore, but the packets were always late / fell apart at the binding / ran out of stock / cost twice as much."  So you could try and complain about the use of an unofficial distributor, but be careful what you wish for.
It raises the question of why the notes have to be distributed in printed form at all, instead of electronically (in which case there should be no costs at all).  I can imagine this happening if the professor is very old-fashioned and  hasn't ever realized that this would be better, or if the notes don't exist in electronic form (e.g. they are handwritten or typed on a typewriter), or just "has always done it this way".  But it would be reasonable to suggest, either directly to the professor or in a course evaluation, that they consider electronic distribution.

Maybe it's a legal matter?  Possibly a misunderstood one. But perhaps it is thought that distributing electronically is more likely to lead to copyright infringement issues with some of the material (say if the packet, which includes partial copies of protected works, is then shared to non-students by someone, someone gets hacked, etc.) than a physical copy would be.

@zibadawatimmy Apparently the “book” is just the professor’s slides.

To me, it's not about the cost of it, but rather the conflict of interest. Making students pay to access your lecture notes, the electronic version of which you use in class to teach; not listing the text as required/suggested material on the course website; selling the material only on an off-campus bookstore; skipping chapters and asking students to read them from the book; all seem like an ethical gray area to me. However, I might definitely be reading too much into it, and that's why I decided to ask on StackExchange before emailing the query to the concerned university office.

@Gummybears: Assuming the instructor isn't profiting, I don't see where there's any conflict of interest.  Making students buy materials is normal, as I mentioned, provided that the price goes to the producer of the materials.  Not listing it on the course website is probably tied to wanting to use a third-party printer; the university might insist that "official" required texts go through the university bookstore, whose services the professor considers inadequate or overpriced.  Skipping chapters and having students read is normal pedadogy.

@Gummybears: So it might be awkward and inefficient, but I don't see any ethical breach.  It may very well be a technical violation of university rules, and if you contact some university office, you might be able to get them to crack down.  But before you do, you might want to think about unintended consequences, and whether everyone would really be better off if you bought the materials from the university bookstore.

@Gummybears: Remember having a conflict of interest is not unethical. What's unethical is acting on that interest in an unethical manner. (Circular, I know. You get my point.) So if you have a complaint, you should look for an example of something that is actually being done wrong, not something that could potentially go wrong. It's very fashionable to accuse people of things that aren't actually inherently wrong these days, so make sure you keep the distinction in mind.

... for example, if those "books" were sold at highly inflated prices, and there were no alternative sources to purchase them from. I've seen cases of having to show the receipt from the bookstore that you have bought the book (instead of lending it from another student) in order to pass the exam, and that was in my opinion highly unethical.

if the notes don't exist in electronic form (e.g. they are handwritten or typed on a typewriter) - we have amazing office machines now that will devour hundreds of handwritten sheets in a matter of minutes and mail you a PDF file with their contents.

So it could be tolerated if it indeed improves quality. However, if it's just a way for a professor to get some additional income?

@JHBonarius: If the professor is receiving any of the money from the sale of the notes, then there is a clear conflict of interest and it becomes ethically much more questionable.  See https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/15136/17254

@J... He himself uses an electronic version of the notes to teach.

@NateEldredge But the question is how the student would come to know of such a fact. Considering he uses an electronic version to teach, why isn't he just uploading them online?

@NateEldredge I do not see anything inherently unethical about a professor profiting from the sale of notes or from the monetization of knowledge in general.  Do you respect the professor as an expert in his/her field and you wish to advance in that field?  If you respect me as an expert in my field (it is ok if you don't) and want my help advancing in that field (also ok if you don't) then you need to pay me.

@emory: I only said "questionable".  If you look at the question I linked, you'll see a wide range of opinions on the matter; feel free to add your own.

A PDF of the slides has negligible cost; and nobody asked for a free printed copy.

@Mehrdad: Having a conflict of interest is unethical if you allowed yourself to get into it despite other options. For, you see, it's impossible to tell whether or not, or to what extent, or actions are influenced by said conflict. And it's often a matter of interpretation. So there is no clear distinction between the "being" and the "acting".

@einpoklum: Not in general. It depends very much on the conflict, as well as on whether or not you had previously certified that you wouldn't have such a conflict. If you think every avoidable conflict of interest is necessarily unethical then your standards are patently absurd. The fact that a parent decides to home-school her kid instead of sending him to school does not automatically make her unethical. The fact that a doctor is treating her friend as a patient does not make her unethical. The fact that a parent decides to lease his house to his kid does not make him unethical. etc.

@emory Aren't we already paying him and allowing him to "advance in the field" by paying tuition? Why else do we pay tuition? A professor's salary comprises of 40% research time, which  means we 40% of what we pay is simply for the professor to be able to research further into their field.

@Gummybears maybe you are and maybe you are not.  Allegedly many adjunct profs make minimum wage -https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/09/income-inequality-in-higher-education-the-college-president-to-adjunct-pay-ratio/407029/.  However, considering the high cost of tuition it is likely that someone is acting unethically.

@emory part of the job of professors is to organize and produce knowledge for their class if this class is part of their teaching load.   It is unethical to be paid by a university to do a job and collect additional monies from students who already pay tuition through the sale of lectures notes that could be made freely available to this class.

You might be interested to know that U. of Kentucky has just initiated moves to fire a tenured professor who did exactly this. https://www.chronicle.com/article/U-of-Kentucky-Moves-to-Fire/243509
However, the professor in this case had also used the university's funds to print the book, so its possible this is what they were upset about.

An important aspect of this relevant to the OP is that “University rules say professors must get special permission to assign their own books, and when they do so, they must donate any proceeds to the university or to a charity.”

It's a scam, but you are stuck with it. Historically, the cost of the pamphlet covered the printing costs. With PDF technology, that's bunk. If you are truly broke, the University Library should have a copy. If not, ask that they purchase a copy as it is a required book for a course (they may already have done so).
Also for that reason, books are not 'required course material' and so are not covered by tuition. While a joke, the lecture notes are effectively a 'book' that the library should have a copy of.

Why is OP "stuck" with it? A group of students can essentially force the teacher's hand, or just go right around him. Also, I think if OP could access a library copy he wouldn't ask here. (I haven't -1'ed you though.)

The question was about the ethics. It's perfectly legal, but not ethical, as it represents coercion by a person in a position of responsibility.

I don't see how your comment addresses my comment.

There are ways around it. A group could buy the book, split the cost, and make a copy for each, via scanning. But that would probably be copyright violation. But the OP's question was not about methods, but about ethics.

Well, you've written OP is stuck with this, while, as you acknowledge, he isn't. As for copyright violation - that's not true. First of all, there's fair use. Second, if the Professor showed this material in class, students are allowed to copy it anyway. Finally, nobody would ever sure them.

Stuck with the scam of textbook publishing. Fair use is 10% of the book. No-one will ever sue for photocopying a book, but it's not ethical to do so. The professor explicitly did not show the material in class (although it was required reading).

The university and/or the teacher must, in my opinion, do both of the following:

Make a copy available as a file (e.g. PDF).
Have multiple printed copies available at the university libraries.

Doing just one of these is insufficient, but not terrible. Doing none is basically a shake-down for extra tuition, which I believe students (and junior faculty!) should not tolerate.
However, as @Wetlabstudent has pointed out - perhaps you should first give the Professor the benefit of the doubt, for, shall we say, having been remiss in his duty, or not having taken notice of how problematic this is. If that's the case, then just asking him to make the notes otherwise available could work. I'm skeptical of course.
Assuming it's been made clear that the Professor will not allow access to his notes except by purchase at the store, I suggest you do the following:

Talk to fellow students in your class about this.
Approach, together, the course teacher, demanding that at least one of the above forms of availability be realized.
If he refuses, confront him, jointly, in class, demanding that this be addressed and trying not to let him get away with it. Caveat: This may theoretically get you into disciplinary trouble, although that's unlikely. I would still do it though.
get your student union reps to intervene and pressure him and/or the department - if they exist, are willing and are able.
If your student union reps don't act, pool some money together and by a copy which you could define as "owned jointly by the students taking the class". Scan the printed lecture notes and distribute the file everyone who contributed or to every student in class who asks, depending on your generosity. Caveat: This may theoretically get you into disciplinary/legal trouble, you have been warned. I would still do it though.
Make sure that if anybody asks, this be described as a collective class project rather than something you did, so that you don't get singled out.

-1: "demanding", and involving "student reps" or the "department" before simply politely asking? Always start with a friendly conversation where you go in assuming good faith. This answer comes off way too aggressive and seems to be needlessly escalating the situation too quickly. One can demand later, but a simple 1 on 1 private conversation in office hours is a better first step where you explain why the issue is so important to you. More likely than not, the lecturer is simply doing what they had done previously (when shared pdfs were non-existent) and never thought about changing

@WetLabStudent: I assumed the politely asking part had already happened; and in fact, I would bet this is the case even after your comment. But - you make a fair point, let me edit my answer. Having said that - there's really no need to explain why access to the lecture notes is so important, and why young, typically broke students need to avoid spending even more money.

@einpoklum You are correct in assuming so. The first day itself I asked the prof whether there was a reason that the notes weren't available online. He ignored the question and asked if purchasing them would be too difficult a task.

@WetLabStudent: In light of OP's comment - would you care to retract your comment?

@einpoklum if the OP puts in their question something like "I specifically asked the professor if they can put the notes online, and when they asked if purchasing them was too difficult of a task, I stated this is why that is problematic ____ and therefore I'd really like you to put them up online" then yes, I'd be willing to retract the comment, and even upvote. I still believe this is escalating the situation too much unless there has been a polite back and forth where the OP has specifically asked what they want and explained why it is important to them [this isn't in the OP's comment yet]

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


text:
what happens to the grant I wrote with my PI if I switch institutions
I am an international master's student at a top US institution and I am graduating from my program in September. I do not have a PhD lined up yet, I am planning on applying in this fall. Towards the end of my master's studies, I came up with an idea for a project and already did the ground work (separate from the project that my PI was funding me for). However, because I am an international student, I cannot write a grant / fellowship for this project idea myself. I've pitched this idea to my PI and she is interested in applying for a grant for this project together, provided I do all the work to write the grant. I am OK with writing the grant and submitting it under my PI's name but my question is: what happens if we get the funding for this project from a federal agency (e.g., NSF) and I end up starting my PhD in a different institution next year? Does the grant money stay with the PI? If so, can that money still be used towards funding my research on the same project in a different university (in a lab where I can do similar research)?
More info upon questions below:
I am worried that I will get the grant with my PI, but won't be accepted for a PhD position in my current institution (I will be applying to a different department -BE- than the department I'm completing my master's in -EE-). The reason for this assumption is that I already applied to BE and was rejected. My PI did write me a recommendation letter but she is not in the admissions committee and she told me that she has no leverage in who is admitted to BE. I'll still apply again this year, but I may be rejected again. So, I'm just trying to see whether it is worth putting the effort in writing the grant if the only way to benefit from that grant is to be a PhD student in my current institution. I'm wondering whether some sort of agreement may be made between my current PI and the future PI in wherever I'll be admitted (still in the US) such that I can still use that grant to work towards my project? There are many labs in other US institutions with overlapping interests as my current lab, so finding a relevant place won't be hard. I'm just curious if anyone had / heard of a similar experience?

Are you saying you want to apply for a type of grant for which permanent residency is required? Why not pick one for which you are eligible instead? And is your concern that you win the funding and (despite the PI agreeing to fund your studies with it) you don't get accepted to the doctoral program there? Or do you not even have such an understanding with the PI?

Why don't you talk to your PI?

Thanks so much for the responses!
Yes, I am worried that I will get the grant with my PI, but won't be accepted for a PhD position in my current institution (I will be applying to a different department -BE- than the department I'm completing my master's in -EE-). The reason for this assumption is that I already applied to BE and was rejected. My PI did write me a recommendation letter but she is not in the admissions committee and she told me that she has no leverage in who is admitted to BE. I will go ahead and apply again with more preparation anyways.

So, I'm just trying to see whether it is worth putting the effort in writing the grant if the only way to benefit from that grant is to be a PhD student in my current institution. I'm wondering whether some sort of agreement may be made between my current PI and the future PI in wherever I'll be admitted (still in the US) such that I can still use that grant to work towards my project? There are many labs in other US institutions with overlapping interests as my current lab, so finding a relevant place won't be hard. I'm just curious if anyone had / heard of a similar experience?

If your name does not explicitly appear in the proposal as an investigator, then the funding, if the grant is awarded, is not committed to you in any way, shape, or form. The PI could in principle take your ideas and use it to fund another student to work on your project!
Unfortunately, most universities will not let grad students serve as PI’s, with the exception of some programs that are specifically aimed at graduate students, such as the Kirschstein Fellowship at the NIH. So you are definitely running the risk of writing your idea up as a proposal and ending up with absolutely nothing to show for it.

Your PI keeps the grant. You get nothing but thanks. Graduate/doctoral students should not apply for grants--they should apply for fellowships.


text:
When to use the title "Professor" if employed at different academic positions in different countries
I have a curious question. I am employed as a Chair Professor and a Professor of Practise at a recognised University in India and I am also employed as a Lecturer at a recognised University in the UK. In email communications of the respective University, I use different titles to reflect my employed academic position for that respective University.
However, when attending conferences or other academia/research/professional events what title is appropriate to use? (Often times the events ask us to use title that are appropriate)
Can I use the title of 'Professor' at events as that is the academic position in which I am employed in India, but in the UK I'm not employed as a Professor yet?
P.S. At events I represent both the Universities (Indian and U.K.).

Do you mean formally, say for correspondence, or informally, in conversation?

@Buffy: I am asking for formal correspondence. For informal correspondence, I usually prefer "Somdip", my first name :P No title required.

You should use the title you hold at the institution which you are primarily representing yourself as being affiliated with.
For example, suppose Anne is a Lecturer in Medicine at at Tsinghua University. Suppose Anne is also a Professor of Medicine at the South Dakota School of Medicine.
If Anne attends a conference and fills out her information, the following would be inappropriate:

Anne Tesfaye, MD PhD
Professor of Medicine
Tsinghua University

Instead, she should use the title that matches her stated affiliation:

Anne Tesfaye, MD PhD
Lecturer in Medicine
Tsinghua University

Thank you for your reply. I usually provide both my affiliations when visiting an event. Which usually will look like: Somdip Dey, Lecturer @ X UK University | Chair Professor of Z @ Y Indian University. However, when asked about the formal title for registration for the event what title can I/should I use in this scenario? Note: I represent both the Universities at the same time at such events (not one or the other).

@SomdipDey Just use the higher title.


text:
Accepting a postdoc position (in a different field) after industry
After a PhD in Biomedical Engineering (focus on Imaging and Robotics) with a decent publication record and some prestigious fellowships, I took on an industry research position at a well-known company, where I've been for 1.5 yrs. Still, I've kept one foot in academia with the goal/hope of one day returning (for the usual reasons: opportunity to do longer-term research, publish, mentor, etc).
Specifically, I've been collaborating with a well-known PI from a different field (Neuroscience) who needed help with a "side-project" (applying machine learning and related techniques to complex neuroimaging data). The project has gone further than expected, and we are close to publishing a paper. I expressed interest in continuing this work and, to my surprise, he invited me to interview; it went well, and I've been offered a postdoc position. Furthermore, since he lacks computational expertise, he wants to set me up with a co-mentor who is renown in the machine learning field.
I'm looking for opinions on how risky it'd be to make this jump. My concerns are:

Field change. While I've taught myself a range of computational techniques through this project (and through my industry
job), my prior publications were not in this field.
Neuroscience is even newer for me. Even assuming a productive postdoc, I worry about my
competitiveness for future TT positions compared to people
who did their PhD's in these exact areas (what do I bring that they couldn't bring?). I'm also concerned
about my CV appearing disjointed.
The mentorship situation, since the PI himself is not a computational     expert. The people in the co-mentor's lab are experts, of course, but I do not know them as well (yet).

Reasons this could be great:

I get to do more long-term, basic research in an area
in which I've always been
interested.
The main PI and I have worked well together, and he is genuinely interested in mentoring me, helping me apply for postdoc/early-career funding, establish independence, etc.
If the co-mentorship situation works out as planned, I'll receive great training from both sides.
Hopefully by having a head start and being close to a paper
already, I'd hit the ground running.

My options are pretty straightforward: Say no and continue my current industry job; say no and start looking for strong postdoc labs closer to my area of expertise (or another industry research position that prioritizes publications and longer-term research); or jump on board and swim!
TLDR: I'm "stuck" between two good options - terrible situation, I know. Still, I've been on the fence, as it's hard giving up a permanent position in industry for a risky alternative. I'd like to know if my concerns are valid, and I'm curious what others would do in my shoes. Apologies for the overly long post, and thanks very much for the feedback!

As far as I know, there no specific field for postdoctoral researchers. A project may require experts in different fields, where machine learning, image processing are highly needed in interdisciplinary fields (e.g., medical image processing).
In my opinion, you should respond to these questions before accepting the offer:

Are you an expert in the domain of the position (regardless of the boss's field) and do you fulfil its requirements?
It is important to note that as a postdoc, you will be responsible for your work and you won't be supervised in terms of your knowledge.
Does this intersect with your PhD in terms of research domain?
Usually, researchers do not know their exact subdomain based on their PhDs (which is more likely to be in several subdomains). For example, working in Imaging and Robotics can be considered as "Image processing", "Machine learning", "Artificial intelligence", "Pattern recognition", etc. I would say, any position in one of these fields will be accepted for postdoc and thus will define more the research path in the next years.

If you take a look at the research interests of any senior researcher over time, you will find slight changes.
I am also doing my postdoc in your field, but it is totally different from what I have done during my PhD. However, I could find a common subdomain between the two experiences and I decided to continue in this direction for the next years.

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


text:
Round Results Up or to Even
In 20+ years of research, I believed rounding of results should follow the "round up at 0.5" rule, while internal rounding during computation may follow other rules such as "round to even" that are supposed to reduce cumulative errors. However, I just learned that my favourite programming language's string format '%.2f' uses "round to even", e.g.
$ python
Python 3.6.15 (default, Sep 23 2021, 15:41:43) [GCC] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> '%.2f' %0.125
'0.12'
>>> '%.2f' %0.375
'0.38'

I wrote a little function frac2decimal(n,d,precision=2) that prints fractions n/d as decimal with "round up at .5" with configurable number of places. In the absence of policies on this matter at my institution and from my publisher, should I use it in future or stick with "round to even"?
Related:

https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/218821/round-to-even-rule
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rounding

Your post does not have a question mark :-)

Thanks. "Should I" is a question, just used the wrong punctuation. Fixing...

"Stick with round to even" is not as simple as continuing to use "%.2f" as the actual rounding method used is platform-dependent. One would have to move to a way of rounding numbers that allows to specify the method, e.g. using Python's "decimal" module. With no clear preference in the community (answers so far), I doesn't matter which method it is. What matters is that the same method will be applied when someone else runs my software again in a replication study as I need them to get the exact same results so that don't say they couldn't replicate my results.

Do you have an actual example in your field where someone says they "weren't able to replicate results" based on being off by a rounding error (that is, one person reports 72.8% and someone else finds 72.7% and states "these results couldn't be replicated"), or is this an imagined scenario?

@BryanKrause No, I've only read a small number of replication papers. It's also unlikely that rounding is different in current replications where the compute platform is highly similar (NVIDIA GPUs, CUDA, x86_64 CPUs, Linux, GNU C Library, CPython). Over time, however, platforms change, differences become more likely and once a different rounding method has become common we should see a lot of cases because the results are usually fractions with a round denominator, e.g. 20000, causing a lot more ties in rounding than expected with random numbers.

Some considerations:

If it matters, be explicit about what you did.

If it matters (e.g., the distinction between .12 and .13 is important), you should be reporting more than 2 decimal points. If your measurements are not sufficiently precise to support a third decimal point, then you don't actually have enough precision for it to matter.

For most "real data" contexts with continuous computations, the probability of ever observing a number ending in exactly "5" down to machine precision is vanishingly small. Consider other representations for data where you'll be e.g. dividing integers by integers: does the original integer tell you more than the ratio? For example, if 3/16 responders in your survey prefer "round to even" over "round up at 0.5", you probably shouldn't be reporting that as 18.75%, 18.8%, or 19% - all those numbers imply far more precision in measurement than you actually have. Just report 3/16 or 3 out of 16.

For observed data that are already rounded by the limits of precision of some technique that gives data to 3 decimal places, for example, 0.12 and 0.13 are exactly the same number. You should always use the full data (e.g. 0.125) for all computations, and only round for the very last step (typically, for display).

Re 3: In my current work, the probability is 7.14%. I report accuracy of a classifier on a test set of size 2800 with 3 significant digits, e.g. 72.8% for 2037/2800 = 0.7275.

@JoachimWagner This is valid, but, like Bryan said, almost certainly insignificant. Would your classifier performance be considered that different if it was 2038/2800 instead? While there is no shortage of papers on hair splitting with relatively small datasets, two NN architectures, one giving 72.8% accuracy and another 74% accuracy on a dataset of size 2800 are basically the same (but 3 significant digits are standard in the field). Class balance alone can upset this value far more than measly .1%. Also also, f'{accuracy:.1%}' for 3.6+ ;).

@Lodinn: I know it is insignificant in the sense that the choice of rounding method does not misrepresent results. If the choice was significant it would be more appropriate to simply display an additional digit. However, in my field, there is the expectation to be able to replicate results exactly as the results are the output of a computer program with exactly described inputs. Leaving the rounding method to default settings of a compute platform is not desirable in this context.

@JoachimWagner If your field considers "replication" to be getting exactly 2037/2800 and 2038/2800 is "not replicating", you need to report 2037/2800, not 72.8% or 72.7%, each of which represents multiple different numbers, some of which are more different than 2037 vs 2038. If you choose to also contextualize this number as being equivalent to 72.8% or 72.7%, that's okay. If you think the way you round is important, you can state the rounding method that you used. It's irrelevant whether this is based on a default setting.

@BryanKrause The default setting is that the rounding method is undefined, i.e. the method can be different on different computer systems. To make the results replicable while following the standard practice in my field of reporting percentages rather than fractions with arbitrary denominators, I need to write code to select a specific rounding method. In my question, I try to find out which rounding method will be the best choice as I need to pick one.

@JoachimWagner I don't know how to be more clear: write in your paper what method you used, whether it's a method you "select" or something chosen for you by software. Just write what you used. No need to write code if your choice is default, no need to worry so much about which to choose. Write what was used. Include the full numbers someplace, either on the manuscript or a data supplement.

@BryanKrause Showing the exact numbers in the appendix is not a solution unless it becomes widely known that replication studies must compare against those instead of the rounded numbers in the main paper. I see 3 workarounds: (a) write the released code such that it does not display rounded numbers at all (and pretend I created all result tables manually), (b) add assert '%.2f' %(1/8) == '0.12' and '%.2f' %(3/8) == '0.38' to any code that prints rounded results (and a comment what it means if this fails), or (c) use my own rounding function.

@JoachimWagner It's your paper, do what you want, but then why bother asking here? I think your three workarounds are silly compared to 1) including your complete results in a data appendix and 2) writing the sentence in your methods section "Approximate results are displayed using 'round-to-even' method."

@BryanKrause You ignore the reality of not being the most senior author of the paper: My strong push for including such as sentence will be overruled as being way too much detail. Re "Why bother asking here", workaround "c" motivates the question I asked as it requires me to pick a rounding method. The purpose of the question is to get a sense of what experts on rounding of research results think is the preferred method.

@JoachimWagner If that sentence is too much detail for the senior author (have you actually asked or just assumed?), then I'd conclude that your concerns about rounding overall are also completely unimportant to them, and that you're imagining some issue with "non-replication" that is not actually an issue. That's the whole point of my answer: if it matters do these things. Is your senior author convinced it matters? If not, then this is all moot.

@BryanKrause Thanks to your questions and suggestions, I've come to 3 solutions 4 comments above that satisfy both the reproducibility concern and the "too much detail" concern.

@JoachimWagner I think those are terrible ideas, especially those that add hidden complexity to your code and workflow. A) doesn't solve anything, B) is terrible practice if you literally mean adding specific code to handle those two cases, it makes your code act differently with different parameters that don't give those precise results and makes it non-portable, and C) adds completely unnecessary complexity and you certainly shouldn't do it without also explaining in your paper they this is what you've done, which would take just as much explanation/detail as any of my suggestions.

How you treat round-off depends on context. There is no "one size" rule that works for any possible type of result.
What you should be doing is uncertainty analysis. Any given data point will have some degree of accuracy. You urgently need to record this information and evaluate how it affects the results you report. If you do not then you leave yourself open to severe criticism of any calculations you perform with the data, even to the point of your conclusions being entirely invalid.
Just a trivial example: If you use a ruler to measure a distance, the usual rule is the accuracy is +/- half the smallest division. So if the ruler is divided into mm, then your uncertainty is +/- 0.5 mm. This will then contribute to the uncertainty in any calculation you perform with this measurement.
For other types of data there will be other types of accuracy or uncertainty. Some times it is +/- some value or percentage. Sometimes it is statistical, such as randomly selecting some sub-set from a population in trying to represent the whole population, such as a survey. Sometimes it is due to systematic effects such as in medical tests that can give false positives or false negatives.
In each case you must include this degree of uncertainty in the measurement when you perform calculations. This is a very large topic with huge amounts of discussion. My favorite method (when it is applicable) is Monte Carlo. There are many valid methods.
But it is very high priority to include a calculation of the accuracy of the result based on the accuracy of the data that is used, and the nature of the calculation.

Suppose I have done all that. For reporting the relevant final statistics, what rounding method should I employ?

It depends on the accuracy of the final result, and what form they take. Rounding may not be appropriate at all. This is a HUGE subject, entire text books are written on it.  The wiki link is a place to dip your toe.


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Should I ask the instructor for a make-up exam for attending a PhD interview at another university (and risk my standing)?
I am a first year PhD student at an American university and since I was not satisfied with my present department, I had applied to a few universities last semester (it was my first semester here). My recommenders were all from my previous university and no one in this university knows I applied. I recently received an interview call from one of the universities I applied to. It is a 2 day program, the first day being the interviews and the second day for the faculty presentations and interaction with current students. Unfortunately, the second day clashes with a major exam for a core PhD course I am taking here.
I asked the official of the interviewing university as to what I should do and she said that I could ask for a make up exam in order to attend the second day as well. My question is, should I? My fear is that the instructor could tell about this to other people in my department (or she may actually be bound to do so by some school law?) and that could seriously jeopardize my situation here. I did like the PI for my first rotation here, and might want to join his lab for my PhD in the event that I am not selected by the interviewing university OR I do not like the interviewing university after visiting it.
I thought that I could go to the instructor of this course and ask her if she discuss a matter with me confidentially (keeping the matter confidential at least till the end of this semester), and then ask her about the make-up exam. Is this a good idea?
Another option is to not tell her anything and miss the 2nd day, since the interviews happen on the first day. That way no one would probably know, although I will miss the crucial part of the faculty interviews and student interaction which is so important for me to make my decision.
Is there something else I should consider that I am missing? Any help could be life-saving!

Have you considered abandoning your application to the university with the conflicting interview schedule?

@PatriciaShanahan Oh no, I do like that university and it is supposed to be better than my current university. Since the actual interview date is not conflicting, I definitely want to go for the interview. Only the second day of the interview is in conflict with an exam in my current university.

Realistically, if you try to prepare for both the exam and the interview at the same time, you are probably not going to do either well. Can the interviewing university explain why they will not work around your prior commitment to take the exam?

@PatriciaShanahan I think the schedule for the interviews is a higher level decision that applies for all interviewed students.

Can you goto the test and then spend 1/2 day at the other event?  Some tests are only a couple hours long.

@cybernard No, the test is at 1 pm and the event at the interviewing university ends at 1 pm in another state!

You don't have to tell your instructor why you want to reschedule your exam.  Just tell her you have a conflict with a personal matter and ask if it is possible to take the exam on a different date.
She might say no, but if she does, then she would probably have said no even if you had told her the real reason.  Usually exam makeup policies are either "flexible" or "no makeups except for medical reasons or conflict with another course".  Attending an admissions event at another university isn't any more compelling as an excuse than "generic personal business".
If she does say no, then you're going to have to choose between the two.  It probably makes the most sense to attend the interview and then come back for your exam, skipping the second day of the event.  It's probably not wise to skip the exam - you don't want to get bad grades if you are looking to apply elsewhere.

The policy indeed is "Make up exams are not usually permitted."

@qwerty994: Ok, then your request for a makeup will probably be denied, whether you explain the reason or not.  Plan to attend the exam.

You can occasionally increase your chances of success by specifying that you can take the exam either a few days early (so the prof doesn't think you're trying to get extra study time) or else a day or two late (so the prof doesn't think you're trying to go on vacation early or similar).

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


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Bullying in Academia: Harassed by senior PhD student?
Now this is something that happened long ago and even after so long, in a way begs for an answer, so I thought that I might ask here.
This happened to someone who was in another department of my university, H. He had taken an entry level position (a trainee, eventually moving onto a grad assistant) in a lab. In all his time there, he was heavily bullied by a senior phD student B.
Apparently, H via a slip of tongue had made his future career aspirations known to B's advisor, K. Now, K felt that H's career choices were against their personal beliefs. This lead them (K) to try and bully H out of the place completely. They did everything in their power to brand H an outsider and an unwanted presence, scrutinizing everything from their quality of work to H's appearance and diet (yes diet, turns out when people get desperate to smear someone they'll literally say anything ). H's advisor L was pretty close with K, but K held a lot of pull in the department and hence was able to continue this. He made sure that H was assigned either nonsensical problems (which H still diligently followed through, much to the chagrin of everyone else) and also made sure that he would not be allowed to do any of it; in hopes that he would be driven away.
B was a phD student co-mentored by K and L. B would also sit right behind H and made it his priority of the day that H would not get to do any work no matter what (he would also encourage others to do the same, in fact many joined in). How he managed to keep up with his research and bully someone is beyond me. Though there were rumors that he had to be shifted to another location in the lab because he had become (almost) obsessed with H to the point that he was abandoning his own work.
It was said that H was pretty good at what he did and in the face of all the problems he was given (that no one wanted), he did the best he could and completed them, finally submitting all his findings before leaving. B was apparently frustrated with his own progress and was seemingly under-performing too, this might have lead to him to bully H ( due to the jealousy of seeing a younger member of the lab getting something done when one is barely eking out anything ). Apparently he (B) had been reprimanded before once for slacking off.
I think the harassment also escalated because H was not allowed to speak up, and when he did try to in any way, he was immediately silenced and reprimanded for doing so. In the end, whatever incident may have caused him to speak up was blamed on him. This was only found much later, before that, H was blamed for many transgressions (when they were forced upon him by someone else).
H may have needed the position, since he did whatever was required to get his work done and stuck through. Ironically, in the end he was blamed for a lot of everything due to his "lack of speaking up" (when he was being secretly reprimanded whenever he did so).
For the sake of brevity, I'll not include the massive drama that followed, including K using every inch of his power to put H down, H clashing with another member of the lab and finally, a new hire being pitted against H. In the end, H left, but I wonder even now, what should have been done in this case?
Some of the other grad students in that department whom I spoke to gave off the vibe that they did in a way side with H, but were too scared to take a stand with him because they did not want to go against K and hence ended up saying nothing or simply joining in against H. It was either him or them. K had also gotten one of the administrative assistant's in the lab to smear him across the department and spread all kinds of rumors about him, so by the time H had left, mostly everyone hated him. It was actually strange because most of them knew the truth but spited H nevertheless (to protect themselves). B also had a habit of bringing people to sit behind H and then badmouth him (basically anything, did not even have to be true), this was only one of the few things he did. This was a common occurrence. B got away with it in the end. He was able to pull this off because of another highly corrupt grad student.
I did come to hear that B and the other grad students actually bragged about how they would try to mess with H's sanity ( by trying to make him belive that he was doing shitty work when he was not, I'm using the word trying here because H eventually completed his task and something like this would be pretty childish so I would wonder if something like that would actually work ) and how easily they could get away with it. Although many cannot (read would not) admit it openly, it is pretty henious the way B made personal ( and very out of line ) attacks to H's character this way. Strangely, even though H is gone now, they (corrupt grad students present there now) still brag about how they mess with H even though he is far away (not sure about the exact details, but I think this has something to do with spreading rumors) and how easy it is to do so.
All these incidents had become part of the daily gossip at our university as K pipped all of this as 'entertainment' created by him. Because H was known to not participate in any of the bullying, other students caught wind of this whole deal (due to the aforementioned rumors) and would try and bully H the same way it was being done in the lab. People did it because they found the effect comedic.
B and the other grad students would encourage people to slander and harass H. This lead all kinds of (absurd) rumors about him. They apparently pipped this as trying to mend some form of his 'sensitivity' (as if this wasn't harassment enough). This way, they tried to force their opinion on him.
Perhaps B's personal values were very low or maybe he was born with low ethics. Why he held a personal animosity against H, who knows?
I wanted to clarify because people asked, but the bullies blamed H no matter what happened, it actually became absurd and funny at the same time because people actually believed all of the nonsense (not actually believe it, just playing along because it was hilarious and because they thought H 'deserved' it, something which commonly occurs when everyone jumps on the hate-train without ever caring about what the hell is going on or what is causing this, hell shamefully, even senior academics do this. So in retrospect, the bullies almost got 'unpaid labor' or people willing to do their dirty-work free of cost for them )
One would wonder how it got so bad? K was doing his hate-mongering but he was only able to goad many people into it because there was an opening on H he could easily use. This opening was a source of his unpopularity which stemmed from his aforementioned clash with another graduate student.
I do know from the rumors floating about that originally, H had pissed off a female grad student by rejecting her advances and she made life hell for him. She played every card on the table, spread malicious rumors, which in turn lead to all the known bullies in our workplace to also target him (kind of like a landslide), used another grad student (who was supposedly close to her) to do all her dirty work, made it a personal agenda to turn everyone against him. Seems like it was pretty effective. I'll spare you the gritty details, but apparently she was angry that he was ignoring her 'out of hour calls'(rumor has it they had zero things to do with real work ). In a meeting she was able to confront him about it (as to why he kept ignoring her calls) and went psycho on him in the middle of the road, it was quite a public incident which consisted of him just standing there and taking it (onlookers judged it to be something akin of a situation where H did try to slide in a few counterarguments but he stopped when he realized that the screaming would only increase if spoke more so he just kept ended up keeping mum ).
It is said though that there is another reason why it came to be this bad, it was simply because there were other elements involved. Maybe someone really disagreed with H's personal opinions.
Another point to note, these (B,K et al.) are a really evil and malicious crowd, they will deny any responsibility and claim this never happened if asked about it (I guess they have to do it, what they did was inhuman and consisted of needlessly infringing on a single person's life, who would not deny it after doing something like that? The most expected behavior of such a people is to blame the person in question).
What should people have done when the bullying had become this bad? H did eventually end up leaving, but the perpetrators also got away with it scot free (last I heard the grad students got jobs and moved away and B is still completing his PhD.. ). So what could have the higher ups have done to contain this? I mean these are people who think dwell on spreading lies, I mean, you really think people didn't see what you were trying to do? Is it really okay to let B and the other grad students get away like this? What you tried to hide in what you were doing? What you are so desperate to hide? Are you absolutely sure nobody found out? Inspite of so many leaps in progress in building a better academia, what is our system still lacking to handle such cases of bullying?

Perhaps because they don’t deal with bullies in either primary or secondary school so thet get to grow up - well get larger physically not necessarily mentally.

This is a very long story for a very, very specific situation. Using abbrevations for the names makes the long story very complicated and hard to follow. Perhaps omitting some back-story and asking the core question might help you get more (and more efficient) answers.

@SolarMike, it is isn't it? I think bullies aren't the only ones who don't grow up. Worse are the people who as children would mindlessly join in with the bullies and do the same later on, it's the same, they get larger physically but not necessarily mentally.

The only way to handle this kind of bullying is to speak up to the appropriate authority.
Speaking up to your localized group will cause more issues, going above your lab manager to his boss will cause more issues, and complaining to the department will  also cause more issues.
Most universities have a student life office that can direct you to the person responsible for handling behavioral offenses. If you were in this situation, or directly observed it, my only advice would be for you to contact the student life office and describe to them what you experienced/witnessed. At that point one of two things will happen if you're reporting it on behalf of someone else:

They will direct you to contact someone who can investigate what you're saying and start to fix the problem.
They will tell you that unless the person who is being bullied speaks up they can't help.

Right now in the US and Europe the anti-bullying war is in full swing, so bringing this up to someone outside of the lab will probably bring about some change. What you're describing goes beyond bullying in most states well into actual criminal harassment laws.

This sounds like a reasonable response, but this specific situation was slightly complicated. The bullies were almost walling in H, no matter what he did, be it any right or imagined wrong, he was held accountable / blamed for it (if anything good ever ended up happening, it would always be seen in a negative sense). You are perfectly spot on about your analysis about this stepping into criminal harassment laws, I think it could be described as a form of 'illegal coercion'

My point was that you need to take action. By failing to take action you permit the behaviors that cause the trouble. Will there be consequences? Yes. Only you can decide if they're worth it.

Yes, I agree. I guess people really took the wrong action by joining in the bullies instead of actually trying to stop it. I was only responding as to how H's attempts to speak up went, since you made a point about that.