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Involved in potential friction in department over a postgraduate seminar I co-organised - should I worry?
I am a second year PhD student at a UK university. Halfway through my first year, I voluntarily took over the organisational duties of a monthly, school-wide postgraduate seminar, along with two other students. This seminar is open to all postgraduate students and staff in the school. We are supervised/overseen in this undertaking by the doctoral programme director (DPD), who is my personal PhD supvervisor (and with whom I get on very well). Our organisational duties include organising speakers (two per seminar - one a PhD student, and one a member of staff or external speaker), scheduling the seminar dates/times and arranging food (pizza).
An important aspect of each seminar is our "skills talk" - given by a member of staff or an external speaker. This talk is given on some area of formal skills training, such as health and safety, equality and diversity in the school, writing up of theses, acquiring and using academic grants, etc.
Recently, our organisational "supervisor" - the DPD - recommended a small change to how we organise speakers for the "skills talk" aspect of the seminar. This involved sending an email to the heads of the research groups in the school, asking whether they could organise some small number of staff speakers from their respective research groups to speak at some of the future meet-ups of our seminar. This email was approved by the DPD and then sent out.
This was met with a request from one of the heads of research groups for a meeting with us as organisers. During this meeting, remarks were made which I found alarming. Specifically:

"You, as students, should not be emailing the heads of groups telling
us what to do"
"It is not right that students are organising a seminar meet-up of
this nature, involving skills training in areas such as health and
safety"
"I am very concerned with the nature of your organisational duties"

We organisers have of course fed this back to the DPD, but the reason that the nature of the remarks alarmed me is that they appeared to imply potential consequences for us as organisers, outside of the seminar itself. Is this something which we should be worried about?

"You, as students, should not be emailing the heads of groups telling us what to do" - sounds like you may have used a sloppy or informal formulation which sounds like an instruction to fellow students, but inappropriate to state to faculty. It's certainly unintentional from you side, but you should check whether it could have been misunderstood. Also, it might have been good to explain the backing by your DPD.

I don't see anything that you should be worried about, as you've said in your question, your supervisor is the DPD and is the one who approved everything you did.
This head of research group probably didn't know that your activities were approved by the DPD and just thought this was a bunch of students adding to his workload. My expectation is that the DPD speaks with this head of group and they sort things out between them. Your personal supervisor will have your back on this one and has more clout than the group head.
I share the concerns about health and safety though. That sounds like it should be done by a health and safety professional, which your institute will have, rather than student lead.

I might suggest that interacting appropriately with ES&H professionals is a skill that needs to be learned, so getting talks on real-life examples from fellow groups is a good thing.

Just refer them to the DPD for a discussion on the merits of it.

Also I'd add as a hint that when some heads specifically request a meeting with you, potentially even indicating feedback, you might want to try and make sure the DPD is there as well to sort out any misunderstanding or resolve any questions of authority and hierarchy etc.

Academia seems to exist in a perpetual state of someone's feathers being ruffled. Consider this as an earlier-than-usual exposure to that.

During this meeting, remarks were made which I found alarming.
  Specifically:
"You, as students, should not be emailing the heads of groups telling
  us what to do"
"It is not right that students are organising a seminar meet-up of
  this nature, involving skills training in areas such as health and
  safety"
"I am very concerned with the nature of your organisational duties"
We organisers have of course fed this back to the DPD, but the reason
  that the nature of the remarks alarmed me is that they appeared to
  imply potential consequences for us as organisers, outside of the
  seminar itself. Is this something which we should be worried about?

Those specific remarks to me seem consistent with someone who is annoyed, but not mad at you. And (again, based on these remarks) not "implying consequences for you as organizers", merely telegraphing what is bothering them, and actually making it clear they are concerned about what you have been asked to do, not about you personally.
It seems you have passed this on to those who sent you into the line of fire. Let them sort it out and continue on your merry way.
By the way, chances are high whoever has been grumpy at you about this is probably grumpy at many others about many things!


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Fifth year of my PhD and I hate my project. What should I do?
I am a PhD student in mechE. After paying the first year tuition out of pocket, I accepted a PhD project due to desperation for funding. However, after an year I realized that I hate the project. Here I made a mistake of not leaving/changing the project, I just waited out hoping I would like the project. I also asked my advisor a couple for a different project and he did not want to change my project due to sponsor obligations. For some reason I couldn’t assert myself and stayed on. However my hate for the project only grew with time and now I am in my fifth year. I have reached a stage where I absolutely hate the project and don’t know what to do. I can hardly do any work. I feel like quitting everyday and still feel it is wrong to quit this late. I have a very substandard thesis. I am lost and feel stuck, please advise on what to do. Thanks

If there is somebody you personally like and respect to talk to, that might be a good thing.

A similar dilemma: I absolutely hate my PhD and I don’t understand the purpose of it

Why did you accept an answer so soon (in six hours) for such an important life problem? I'm shocked!

Could looking at the synonyms of hate (for example https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/hate) help you describe your feelings better? Often our feelings come in a bundle of unresolved internal and external conflicts (see several good answers below) and words can help you find ways out of the mist or, at a minimum, recognize opportunities in the others' suggestions

Thanks for answering the question everyone, I appreciate it and did not expect such an overwhelming response.

DISCLAIMER
I serve as a mental health 1st aid officer at my school. I received basic mental health training but I AM NOT A PSYCHOLOGIST. During this role, I have assisted many PhD students going through the same dilemma.

PROBLEM
I totally sympathise with you. One thing to consider, however, is whether you are feeling stressed and overwhelmed. PhD is a long and tough journey. The more you know the more you know you don't know. This is normal. This is OK. During a journey, the candidate suffers a lot, and many teeny tiny triggers can accumulate very quickly into pushing any PhD student over the edge. Some personal issues do contribute to the stress as well. Writing anxiety, home sickness, work-life balance and upsetting news overhyped in the media are all factors that can manifest into feeling insignificant and depressed.
I noticed you are working in mechanical engineering (last year). A common case I witnessed with engineers, is that they enjoy the technical work more than anything else (a.k.a writing). Building cool stuff or writing a fascinating and concise piece of computer software is just euphoric. There is a chance that you experience these feelings because writing is due. There is also a chance that you feel the thesis is sub-standard because you wanted to go back and build new cool things. Basically, you need your euphoric fix.

ADVICE
My advice to you is not to rush. Buy yourself some time to figure out what the root cause is. You can consult a therapist or a life coach (you should have access to this service via your university). There are few steps to rewire your behaviour into accommodating the current inconvenience until you finish.

Take some time off (1 week would do). Just treat yourself in doing what you love. No work stuff. Play video games, travel, read poetry, etc. Whatever makes you happy.
Do not feel guilty for wasting a week not working and do not let anyone to make you feel guilty about it. You needed this time off. The project needed you to take this time off.
Go back to your thesis with a fresh attitude (not feeling guilty or late).
If you are experiencing the same feelings and still thinking about quitting. List the cool research or engineering ideas you would rather do instead of working on that project you hate. Pick one that takes N days and do it (don't work on weekends). Maybe you just need that euphoric fix. Set N=4.
Go back to your thesis again. If you still hate it, this time work on the project for at least 5-N days.
Repeat from 2 with N=N-1.

IMPORTANT THINGS TO NOTE
a. Your post-grad degree is just that. A degree. You have your entire life ahead of you after you finish.
b. The steps I listed above are from my supervision experience. While I consulted with a psychologist in designing these steps, they do work on case by case basis and are not scientifically tested. Think of these steps as a life hack.
c. If you feel like not getting from bed in the morning for two days in a row, seek medical help. It is probably nothing or just a dietary deficiency but you better check.
d. If you are an international student, explore the possibility that you may be feeling homesick. Do not get defensive or shy to admit it. It is real and it happens to almost everyone.
e. I am not advocating sticking in a program that does not work for you. There is no shame in quitting. However, if you are quitting I advise you to do it for the right reasons. Please be careful of the legal consequences, if any. Also please consider the career interruption period (5 years) on your CV.

I don't consider a stopped PhD is a "career interruption". You gained a lot of experience doing the things you do: research, taking control of your own project, writing technical papers (if succeeding at it), teaching (if included). Downside: if you don't finish you don't have a diploma to prove it, but you can explain. It not like 'the road to a phd' has no value. But then again I'm not an employer.
I myself am also considering to stop a PhD after 3 years, but I ended up with a severe burnout and anxiety attacks. Sometimes quitting prevents from getting into a worse situation.

In the advice, what's the lower bound for N?

Good point. I usually set N=1. Always allow students one day for the fun stuff. By the time we approach submission deadline, it will resort to N=0 eventually. But then, the student will do that willingly.

One point you make is crucial: writing is hard, unfamiliar work to us engineering/science types. Writer's block is very real, an extremely painful. Add that for example the solution to a particular equation was cornerstone in my undergraduate thesis, and by the time of writing down (neglected for way too long) I had fogotten how, took me two weeks to derive it again. So write from the beginning. Write down everything. That way, if you are bored/blocked of writing, go doe some experiments, edit earlier writing, go to the library, summarize new stuff (needed for your "state of the art" chapter!)

@vonbrand Yes. Yes. Yes. Encouraging PhD students to write 500 words daily was very effective with me. Even if they just write grocery list. It is just to get the habit flowing. Eventually they will have something to write. By the time they have to produce the 1st paper, they will find enough material already written down for the boring part. One good encouragement is for them to write a blog and just keep updating it. The interest from readers gets them hooked on pleasing the audience and later reviewers and editors.

While I like the answer a lot and have upvated, a little style issue: using "#" for section titles, and "**" for boldness makes it look quite like in "panic mode". If you feel the need to add strong sections, I'd suggest to use a lower level header (like "###" which is just boldness without too much size increase). For emphasis, I'd suggest "*" (italic). But again, that is just a preference, to make it a bit less hectic to read. :) Great answer.

@AnoE Thanks. I believe with so many great answers here, perhaps we need help from a mod or an editor to collate them all into a wiki or something (I am new here). It is such an important topic.

The important question at this point is, how close you are to finishing? Fifth year sounds like right at the end to me. I agree, that if you feel this stuck (everyone has such a phase at some point, but yours sounds more severe), you should cut your losses. But the best way to cut your losses at this point might just be to hand in a mediocre thesis. After all, one way to get rid of the project is to simply finish it.
But in any case, think about why you want that PhD in the first place. If you just want it to get a better job in the industry, quitting it is definitely not the end of the world. You might not get your dream position, but as a mechanical engineer you won't end up unemployed even with just a Bachelor's degree. If you really want to do research, just not on this topic, then I fear the only way is forward. Without a PhD, opportunities are rare and at this point you are unlikely to find any funding for another five years to start a new PhD on a different topic. Think of the few more months of hardship as the price of admission. It might feel like hell, but it will be over at some point.
And finally if you feel like things are getting to much out of hand, don't hesitate to consult a professional. Even just talking through the details with a therapist might be incredibly helpful in ordering your thoughts and keep you from taking any rash decision, one way or another, which you might regret later.

The question can be: is your dream position a position you actually want. I always wanted independence to make my own decisions. But there is no job at which can make all the decisions. Plus I am realizing I actually cannot handle the responsibilities. So the dream job I was aiming for is actually probably not suited for me. I'm now considering quitting and returning to industy, doing a simple job learning to accept that I don't have control over all decisions.

I think one important point is being missed here.
There's the project, and there's the thesis.
These are really two separate issues, but that is often forgotten. If you're not satisfied with your thesis (whatever state it is in), it is entirely up to you if and how you wanna proceed with that. There might be expectations from other people, but no one can force you to get a PhD.
The project on the other hand is a very different animal. By signing a contract you agreed to do a certain job. Getting a PhD is not part of that job, but lots of other things are.
So my advice would be to try and separate these in your head (and in your emotional state). If you hate the project, then from now on it's just an uninteresting (but time-limited!) contract you have to finish. You do the work, you get paid. That's it.
As for the thesis, once you manage to emotionally and intellectually decouple that from the job, you might find salvageable material in there. Maybe set it aside for a while, forget about it, get some distance. Then look at it again later, you might see new things in it from a fresh perspective. Always remember that no time is ever truly wasted. Everything is a learning experience, particularly those things that feel like failure initially.

Oh, one more thing. You might be in an overall mental state that qualifies as some degree of depression ("can hardly do any work" etc.). So on that account it may also be advisable to speak to a mental health professional.

In most cases, the advisor signed a contract with the project.  He (or she) should be involved enough that they can easily transition if a student leaves, if that's not the case, well, it's poor planning on their part but not a reason for a student to stay.

Well sure, formally it's just a job you can simply quit according to laws & terms. But a researcher in the middle of a scientific project isn't someone you can simply replace. And that's definitely NOT (primarily) because of poor planning (really a preposterous claim). It's because that person will have accumulated huge amounts of tacit knowledge that is close to impossible to transfer to a newcomer. And I'm not even mentioning the incredible overhead in transferring the little knowledge that is in fact transferrable.

That's true of most jobs, especially with skilled employees, and yet people quit and life goes on.  I agree with the overall point of this answer though - it's good to separate the thesis from other work that needs to be done.

I think you should talk to your advisor and try to figure out concrete, achievable roadmap to finishing. Most of the time when I was feeling what you are describing in grad school, it was because I wasn't getting anything done, I didn't know what my next step would be, and it felt like treading water-- slowly exhausting myself without making progress towards the shore.
Your advisor will understand. We all hate our work sometimes. You don't like doing this project and you'd like to stop. There are two paths out of that, quitting or finishing. Plan your final push and start checking off the boxes that lead to freedom.

I've never worked on a PhD thesis, or even a Masters degree. I don't know how difficult either are, but I can assume they are extremely difficult, time consuming, and that's why they deserve so much respect. Take a moment to realize that you have already done what most people haven't in getting a Master's degree. Take another moment to understand that you are almost done with something that ever fewer people attempt.
Now the hard part
I've been in the IT industry for over 25 years. I've rarely had a job I liked and I've never had a job I like 100% of the time. Either the managers didn't know what was going on, upper management was clueless, people in general were mean for no reason (including customers), or the project was uninteresting or not in the areas I wanted to work. This, unfortunately, is life. You'll likely be working on things you can't stand more than you work on things you like.
I'm not telling you to "suck it up" or "deal with it", I'm telling you to recognize it now so you can better handle it and work the problem later. You might be stuck in your current project, but later on you'll have more choices.
What I want you to do is to take a step back from your problem, try to understand what it is exactly you hate about the project, and figure out what, if anything, you like about it. Put it all down on "paper", if you have to. Do a pros vs cons worksheet. Get things into order so you know what you're looking at and categorize things so you can understand them. Now work the problem.
Rank those things in order from most important to least, and also rank them in best to worst. Figure out how to minimize your time doing the things you hate, unless they are required, and maximize doing the things you like. I'm not advocating you shirk your responsibilities, but I am advocating you look at things critically and figure out how to improve your situation.
What will help with all of this is figuring out why you feel a certain way about a task. Do you hate working in the units you're required to use (mm vs inch, ml vs oz, whatever). Do you hate a computer language or the tools, or some of your co-workers, the end results of the project, or just exactly whatever it is. Now, do you need to change your mind about something? For example, if you hate working in the metric system, you'll likely need to change your mind, since most engineering is done in metric. If you really dislike someone because of their nagging, is it because they are trying to get you to work to your full potential or are they just a busybody, and if they are the former, are they giving the advice in a positive or negative manner, and if it's positive, are you taking it as constructive criticism or just criticism? There's endless possibilities here and only you can answer all those questions.
For later
Once you get out into  the workforce, you'll have more freedom to work on what you like. However, job descriptions aren't always correct, they don't describe how toxic (or not) the work environment is, and they likely won't tell you how all the projects are going to be utilized. And once you start a job, that job description is going to change. It might take years or there might be a drastic change shortly after you join, and maybe that change wasn't something people expected at the time you got hired.
You will need to use the skills you are learning now about undesirable projects to decide if you are going to stay with the company, the department, or if you're going to change jobs. There's always the question of money, but with an advanced degree, you should have a better time with that than most people.
Understand that you have decisions to make, understand the decisions based on the checklist I suggested you make, and then make your decision based on what you can live with.
For now
Getting an advanced degree is a great thing, but it's also a choice. You can continue working on it now, get it out of the way, and push through the negative until you get the results you want. Or you can quit, have a good job, a good life, and maybe take it up again later. But realize that "later" may never come. Even if it does, you might get into that project and not like it either, feeling as if you're wasting your time doing another thing you hate.
It's completely your choice what you do, but I'd suggest you stick this out and finish your doctorate. Get the professional mental help you need, if necessary, which it sounds like you do. There's nothing wrong with getting your mind right and nothing wrong with getting help to do so. Mo Hossny's excellent answer goes into this, so I won't.
What might also help is getting your mind off work. Get a hobby, if you don't already have one, or restart a hobby, if you've put it to the side, and do that instead of thinking about your thesis and your job all the time. Burnout is all too common. It happens all the time in people working a regular "9 to 5" job, and I hear it's also really common in people getting degrees. I got fairly burnt out just trying to get an associates, but that was also while I was working a full time night job. I didn't recognize it at the time, but I also got burnt out trying to get my bachelors degree, and part of the reason I didn't finish it. (Money was the majority of the reason I didn't finish.) I really wish I had finished it. It would have helped me a lot and I wouldn't have had to go back to school for that associates.
Once you get your degree, take some time off. Mo Hossny suggests you take time off now, and I totally agree with that. You'll also need time, once you're done, to get your mind off the project, realign it with your future, and just de-stress in general. Too many people don't take time off work, which leads to being burnt out. They feel they need to always be working or it'll never get done, their job will be on the line, their boss will hate them, or any number of other reasons to fear not doing their job. The thing is, the job will be waiting when they get back, it'll never be done regardless (unless they really are fired), and if their job is so toxic that their employer doesn't want them to take time off, they need to find another job. So take care of yourself. Learn that now and you'll be ahead of the majority of other people.
And the break after your degree doesn't have to be long. It can be 1-2 weeks, or it can be 1-2 months. It depends on your mindset as well as your finances, but only you'll know that and only when it happens, so don't worry about that now. Just look forward to it.
Finally
Again, only you can know what you really want to do. You have to figure out if you're going to stay or if you're leaving. Hopefully I've given you some food for thought on how to figure that out. I also hope I've helped you understand that this is a learning experience in how life works, and to learn from it as well, so you can handle it when it happens in the future, because it will happen again, unfortunately.
I wish you the best! Good luck! And work the problem.

It is never too late to quit. It is better for you to avoid wasting more time and also for the funder because other candidates could be able to work in your position more effectively. If you are completely sure that you do not possess the enthusiasm required for this topic and you are still not even close to obtaining the PhD. degree, just leave.
However, in some cases depending on the contract, the students might be obliged to recover the funding in case of an unsuccessful research period. This is a tougher situation, but in either case, you should communicate your problem with your supervisor and funder, and you need to work it out together to minimize both your and the funder's losses.

students might be obliged to recover the funding in case of an unsuccessful research period — Really? That's insane.

"Insane" doesn't imply "never happens." I know of a situation where several years' funding was lost through non-delivery of a final report - and the reason was that the author was killed in a road accident a couple of weeks before the deadline, and that was insufficient time for the rest of the group to find the "final version" of work that had already been completed and written up in the guy's somewhat chaotic filing system!

I'll just point out usually obligations with funding are to the institution or advisor.  Don't make that a reason to stay - unless your contract that you signed with the school says that as a student you need to pay back funds if you don't complete the degree or project.  Such a clause seems borderline criminal to me, but it may exist.

Preface: this is narrow focused and might barely be above being a comment, but I feel like it deserves being presented at the very least as a corollary answer to one like @Mo Hossny's.
Consider seeking some professional help
If you are feeling too overwhelmed to make a decision and concerned that you might not be making a sound one in regards to how the situation is making you feel right now, then it can be incredibly helpful to get some help from a related professional, and there's nothing to be ashamed of in doing so. Ideally, find a clinical psychologist. Pay attention to their focus and methodology (for example, if you're more comfortable with the concepts behind cognitive behavioral therapy, seek out someone who practices that). Be prepared for the possibility of not hitting a perfect fit for yourself (and it's fine to ask for a referral if that's the case), but also give things a little time.
My concern is that some of the things you are describing could turn out to be warning signs (this is not an attempt to diagnose you over the internet from a single post, but definitely me saying that if you are feeling like you need help, then please get it), and you may have put yourself in a position where your feelings towards certain aspects of your project are being overrun and confounded by others, and equally may be spilling out into other aspects of your work in general. Particularly if things or aspects of your work which you previously enjoyed or found satisfying no longer are. But even if that's not the case, the situation you are describing is the type that can make it difficult to make a well reasoned decision for anyone, and that's where it can be ideal to have a third party to help work through it with you.
You could continue to work on unraveling this yourself (and there's great advice being given here where you've already reached out for help), but it's also exactly the sort of thing that a psychologist is extremely well suited to help you address, particularly as it relates to helping you pinpoint related feelings and in turn work through your own decision in relation to the options you have.
One way to look at this is that, much like when one pushes through the pain in sports and causes themselves an injury, you may have done something similar by continuing on this to the point where you are now finding it difficult to even do any work at all. Just like there's nothing to be ashamed of when seeking professional medical attention for other areas of your body when they're interfering with your life, there's nothing to be ashamed of with seeking appropriate help when the trouble you're facing is psychological in nature.
Whatever academic choices you make going forward, it's important that you make sure you put yourself in a good place mentally to make those choices in ways that are true to yourself. It sounds like you are overwhelmed and struggling with finding related clarity to work through what choices to make, and that's very much the type of thing that a Psychologist can help you with. It's possible that with some work, you could more narrowly determine what specific aspects of the project are the ones you specifically hate, and either find ways to make them bearable in conjunction with the wider project, or find other avenues to take (which other people have already noted well). If you're concerned about seeking out someone who can relate to your academic predicament, a clinical practicing PsyD or PhD of Psychology is also someone who has been through a rigorous academic and professional process to not only achieve their degree but also their license.
As @Mo Hossny noted, as a student you should be able to seek related counseling through your University's health or counseling services (the one at my University is also more than happy to refer out, if that is a concern), but note that if you are not comfortable with that option for any reason, you can also (in the US) use the APA's locator service or contact your state association for a referral. There are also other avenues for referral, such as your physician (assuming there's someone you see regularly). The APA also has a page dedicated to advice on helping choose a therapist (with a lot of more general related advice/explanations).

Gather information by reading this important book: The Joy of Burnout: How the End of the World Can Be a New Beginning (Dina Glouberman, PhD, 2003).
Essentially, if you don't stop this project, your body will force you to stop.

I think this is common for many PhD students. I felt similarly when I was near the end of my PhD. It is so much work, and you give up so much. It can be difficult to maintain your enthusiasm for so many years, in the face of so many rewrites of essentially the same stuff. The thesis process is so iterative. Often, the mundane research process does not match the lofty expectations we had for the project either, due to lack of funding, time, or myriad other reasons. Perhaps you can stick with the project but look at it from a different angle, or add or remove elements to fine tune it more to your liking. Remember, this is just one project and it is subject to various school rules that won't apply to other projects. Once you have your degree you will most likely have more leeway to design your projects as you want, within the guidelines of good/valid research of course.  In the end you have to decide what is right for you, but I elected to stick with mine. I put in too much time and money to throw it all out. I am glad I did. I reached my goal of getting my PhD and I now have the experience I need to work on any other project I want.

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Median age at doctorate by field of study and country?
This excellent answer to another question offers some statistics on median age of doctorate recipients from U.S. universities in 2009, across different disciplines.
However, we know that there is quite a bit of variation in PhD length internationally, as well as variation in the age at which students typically enter a doctoral program. So I would expect the age at doctorate to vary by country.
Is there any data available on median age at doctorate by field of study and by country?

NB: This is a reference-request question. As per the tag wiki excerpt, I am looking for answers that are backed up by a supporting document or citation (not opinions).

In my opinion, there are two approaches to answering this question. The first (which seems that the OP expects here) represents references to publications, containing global summary statistics on doctoral graduates across the indicators of interest, such as age, field of study and country. In this category, IMHO the most well-known and comprehensive is the Education at a Glance report by OECD. AFAIK, the latest such report is Education at a Glance 2014: OECD Indicators, which, along with supplementary materials (i.e., highlights), can be accessed in various formats from this page.
The second, open data, approach, which while not requested, I recommend to those wanting to perform their own statistical data analysis, which might be very interesting especially by combining the indicators of interest with other socio-technical and economical indicators, widely available from open data repositories. In particular, for this specific question / category, I would suggest analyzing the following two open data sets from OECD, which can/should be combined in order to perform needed analysis: Graduates by field of education and Graduates by age.

@ff524 My pleasure and glad to hear from someone with common interests :-)! Note that the the above-referenced OECD report does not provide statistics by field of study. As you understand, this is one of the cases, where my second suggested approach of using open data can be useful, as that indicator is available in one the data sets. Enjoy!

I'm happy with this answer because it's much better data than I was hoping for, but for what it's worth, I don't see any way to combine the data sets. Knowing distribution across age and distribution across field for a given country doesn't give me any way to get joint distribution across age and field.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

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What should I do if I find a mistake in my submitted master's thesis?
What would you do if you have already handed in a thesis to your professor, but you printed an earlier version with a small mistake. You want to have a great grade nevertheless, but I am feeling unsure of what to do:
Would you tell him your mistake and hope that he indulgent and says "Okay, then this does not count as a mistake." Since you recognized your own mistake, he is likely to be forgiving. Or would you say nothing and hope that he won't find the mistake?

A PhD thesis? A Master's thesis? What level? Usually it wouldn't be about "the grade" at all, but about correctness, as the first priority.

Moreover the thesis would presumably come back for (hopefully) minor corrections so the typos can be fixed when these minor corrections are made.

Master thesis. Of course it's about correctness but at this level it's also about the grade!

If you apply for job advertisements, nobody will read your thesis and nobody will know how much effort you put in so I would say it's about correctness for academic reason, but it's about the grade for personal reasons.

Your supervisor should be supporting you and helping you find errors as well Julia. It is not all up to you... If your thesis is not getting an external review, then you should be OK. There will be little or no reputational damage as you already got a good grade...

Do you think the small mistake will lead to others reading your thesis making mistakes too? Or misunderstanding your methods or conclusion? Does not sound like it from the way you have written. You should be out celebrating and enjoying finishing your thesis!

I didn't get a grade yet..So the question is should I tell the mistake to this professor before he corrects the thesis or is it better for me to say nothing? That's a really hard choice...Do you think there are some advantages for the grade if I tell him the mistake? I think, if there is no chance, then it would be honest but at the same time kind of stupid to admit the mistake.

Does "Submitted" mean that you officially handed in the thesis, or that you gave it to your professor for checking before submission?

Everyone makes small mistakes from time to time and it is expected that there should be some mistakes in a master's thesis. What you should perhaps do depends on the nature of the mistake. If you are talking about a small or even a big typo, I would suggest just leaving it be and not alerting your professor. Typos are expected and a few won't impact your grade very much, if at all. However, if you have made a major scientific, analytic, or other substantive mistake, acknowledging it and offering a correction is the right thing to do. Depending on the rules of your institution, the professor may not be able to accept a modification to the document you turned in, but if they can, you are sorted. If they can't, them knowing that YOU know that this was a mistake is likely better than them finding the mistake and thinking that you don't know, from a grade point of view.

"Depending on the rules of your institution, the professor may not be able to accept a modification to the document you turned in" This is key here. What the professor allows for doesn't come into play if the system doesn't allow the professor to be lenient. I'd say you should mention it to the prof, propose a solution and let the prof sort whether the solution is acceptable.

Every thesis is likely to contain mistakes, so finding a mistake will not be unexpected in the examination process. As has already been said, if you think it is a small mistake, just leave it and say nothing.
I just thought you might be interested in my personal experience. My thesis was hand typed by me (using an early computer - CDC Cyber 6600 actually) without the benefit of modern word processors and proofing tools. It was manually read many times  by me, parents, friends, colleagues and was deemed thoroughly checked and in good order.
Not so long ago I decided to digitise it so it could be archived. It was scanned and OCR'd and I put the text back into modern word processing tools. I was shocked at the sheer number of typos, grammatical and spelling mistakes it contained that the proofing  tools showed up. It was quite humbling to think that had sat (and would sit in perpetuity) on the university library shelves of all and sundry to read year after year.
So join the club.

My advice would be the same as for someone who submitted a paper to a journal and then spotted a mistake:
Make a note of the error, and the "next point in the process" where you can naturally make changes, fix the mistake in the document.
For a thesis, that next point in the process might be after your professor reads it but before it is officially submitted to the university; or it might be before the thesis is bound for the library; or it might be after the thesis itself is final but before a paper based on it is sent to a journal; or it might be that the thesis is completely final but there is a place to publish errata. Or it might be never. (As other answers have pointed out, final documents with errors are common.)
My advice also includes the encouragement not to stress about the grade. The grade is an arbitrary number that measures not how worthy you are as a person, nor even how good the thesis could have been if it were flawless. It simply measures (one person's opinion of) how good a specific imperfect manuscript is. So you found a mistake in your manuscript; and there are probably others you didn't find. Oh well, you did your best, and it's not a big deal!

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Supervised master students not following instructions: how common and how to deal with them?
I started as a postdoc at the end of last year, and my background is computer science if this helps. My current PI asked me to supervise two students, both went really bad (details below).
Student 1
This is a research-based master student (not sure if this is unique in UK universities), who needed to focus on a single research project for approx. 8 months (including writing up). This student only did what he had been told to without thinking about why and what to do next. Even if he was given rather clear instruction, he did not follow all of them. His data collection and experiments were also rather messed up with lots of errors. Even the PI herself found this student very difficult to deal with, so initially I believed it was not my fault that he did not make much progress.
Student 2
This is a MSc student who needed to do a mini project, which lasted approx. 1.5 months (including writing up). The problem here is this student did not follow my advice at all. The student refused to use the algorithms suggested in the beginning, but chose to compare a few algorithms with the given dataset. I pointed out to compare performances, a single dataset was not enough. But she said she had no time to do more experiments. I also explained the importance of model selection several times and send her several references on this topic, spending almost two weeks persuading her to do some model selection. But in the end, I found her code was completely wrong. I pointed this out and shared an online example, what she needed to do was just to copy and paste the code and change the parameters. She copied the example, but in an incorrect way, and she said she had no time to do this again. Maybe I am too critical, but re-running the experiments really wouldn't take more than one/two hours.
Question
My bad experience with these two students makes me to re-think whether I am indeed the problematic person. From my experience during PhD, I thought students themselves needed to make sure their implementation is correct. But both students had errors in their code and I won't be able to discover them without looking at their code carefully. This also seems an expectation from my PI (to check their code line by line), which was never required by my PhD supervisors. Additionally, my current PI did not help much on supervising both students.
I wonder if this is a common issue for PhD/postdocs that when supervising students, 1) the students usually don't follow the advice; 2) PhD/postdocs are responsible to check their code and 3) supervisors contribute very little.

The general question about thesis supervision is rather broad and does not match the specific issue in your situation very well. I slightly modified your question to highlight the specific issue.

If you supervise them, you were probably one of the better students in your time. You cannot assume that everyone is as motivated as you. You have to adapt to the students' level of motivation and skill.

Are you communicating your concerns with the students or just allowing them to accrue to critical mass? Transparency, honesty, and authenticity are vital to all relationships whenever an issue arises. It may be uncomfortable, but if you whole heartedly believe the students are becoming their own worst problem, then you should discuss this with them.

I've had very few students who want to do things their way rather then my way. Doing things their own way is fine if they get good results. But if they're messing things up, then I'd insist on changes.  (This is in the context of faculty supervising  students; I didn't supervise anyone while I was a student myself.)

I think this is a usual trap to fall in, you assume motivation and dedication, maybe from your own personal experience. However, not all students are necessarily motivated about and interested in their studies and very often it is just about getting a decent grade with a minimum of effort. So try to support especially motivated individuals and manage your expectations and demands in other cases.

I'm going to close this, as I suspect it varies too widely for us to be able to give a good answer. The situation at a competitive, top school is doubtless very different than the situation at a less prestigious school where there is a strong expectation that students will pass. And here there are added unknowns about the professor's expectations.


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Accepted as PhD student, but my funding application was rejected. Now my prospective PhD advisor recommends that I should bail out. What should I do?
I was recently accepted by a university as a PhD student. During the whole process, my potential supervisor agreed to supervise me along with some of his colleagues as my co-supervisor. Although, I have been accepted as a PhD student by the university, but I didn't get the scholarship. I a mentally as well as financially prepared for the expenses. But now my supervisor is saying that I should decline the offer. I told him that I can manage my expenses, but in every mail he is giving me some other excuse for not accepting this offer. I am confused now as to what I should do. Since the graduate school has accepted me, now it's up to me whether I should accept or not. But I am not able to understand why my supervisor is not willing to take me.
Any suggestions for what should I do now are highly appreciated.
Thank You.

Presumably your supervisor believes you should get funding. Send them an email explaining you are confused and ask if they can call you or if you they can schedule a video call

What are the reasons that he gives for asking you to decline? My thinking is that he may have good personal reasons for not wanting to supervise you anymore, but if the graduate school accepted you, it's your right to accept. However, it may be that he knows that apart from him nobody else is available for supervising your project. So he may know that you put yourself in a difficult position by accepting, because it may not be possible to find qualified supervision. I don't think the issue is that you didn't win the funding, or at least, from my point of view, it shouldn't be.

When I first inquired about his reluctance, he said that financially it ay be difficult. I told him that I was mentally as well as financially prepared if I didn't got the scholarship. Then in the next email he said that, the time length of PhD may increase. And I told him that I am aware of that situation as well and I am mentally prepared for that as well. Because I am worried that if I accept the offer, and then when I reach the university he may not entertain me saying that "I already told you to decline the offer". But now its my choice to accept or decline. I am just utterly confused now

Does self-funded mean supporting yourself as a TA, or paying possibly a hundred thousand dollars out of pocket?

It's not quite clear to me whether your supervisor is still available for supervising you in case you accept. Have you asked this directly? Even if he says yes (maybe because he has to, but maybe he actually doesn't have to), you may consider that he won't be really happy to have you, which isn't a good start, although occasionally it still can work out. In any case you should find out whether there would be another supervisor available for you in case you accept and the current one doesn't want to do it our treats you badly if he has to take you on.

self funding means i will have to pay the tuition fees but I am also looking for a TA position so that I can support my living expenses and lodging.

Probably write to that supervisor, asking that if you think you will be busy, then perhaps you can suggest any other colleague.
There can be many reasons which that guy must have shared with you. I am assuming a few instances.

First, as pointed out in the comment above, he may be thinking that
getting a self-funded Ph.D. is too over-burdening to you (which
frankly, it is, because unlike bachelors or Masters degrees, Ph.D. is not only
tough, there is no minimum time-limit per se)

Secondly, he may be leaving the university or department, or he may have other engagements that do not allow him to supervise you at the moment. In that case, your asking him to direct you to any other colleague of yours would make more sense.

But frankly, I personally think that one should do a PhD on any funded project. A self-funded Ph.D. journey often gets a bit bitter towards the end.

I don't think it's the supervisors job to assess in advance whether a potential student whom he doesn't know well personally can handle self-funding or not.

@Lewian well, the supervisor's job is to choose a good candidate that has good chances of success, so yes, that is part of their job. Of course, one can argue that their assessment is unfounded, and probably they are not allowed to change their mind if they already agreed to supervise. But assessing candidates' suitability for the position is definitely part of the supervisor's job.

True, but the pure fact that somebody is self-funded doesn't say anything about their suitability, unless the student stated in advance that if they are self-funded they have to work 6h a day to earn the money. That indeed would be a reason to not accept a student, but if there isn't any knowledge like this, I don't see what the funding has to do with the suitability of the student.

Now he is saying that because of the current situation, the lab timings are on and off, so there is a possibility that you might not submit the desired results on time. I told him that how can you judge that before even giving me a chance t work!! I think he is just making some lame excuses. Is it okay on my part to directly ask him whether he want to supervise me or not. Because i have invested my 4 months, my energy and time in building this project and now he says that just don;t accept the offer!! I may be on the verge of a mental breakdown because I don't have any alternative.


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Good approaches to integrate research and teaching?
There is an effort at my university to promote "research integrated teaching" [Barnett, 2005; Robertson, 2006] which got me thinking about the topic. I generally make an effort to discuss research problems and recent results when they fit with the material we're covering in a course, but it occurs to me that this is a very passive approach.
I'm interested in developing more active or creative ways that research work and teaching efforts can be combined to benefit the quality of teaching without negatively impacting research. Are there any approaches that have shown to be particularly effective?

Answers could be specific to disciplines. (Of course, we might learn something from different disciplines.) Do you want to mention your own?

I think it's important to think about both ways in which the faculty member can do things that bring together teaching and research and also ways in which students can be brought into doing research.  e.g. you're combining teaching and research if students in a course that you teach do work (as part of the course) on a research project that you're involved in.

You might find Mick Healey's website helpful: http://www.mickhealey.co.uk/resources. I attended a workshop of his a couple of years ago on integrating research and teaching - it provided numerous examples and food for thought.

An experience that worked out well in my past: in grad school as a TA, I helped to create an "intensive" section of the main introductory artificial intelligence course.  Students who opted into the intensive section did two projects and got 25% more units of course credit.
For each project, the students had two options, an "applied" option and a "research" option, each on something highly topical.  The research options were always restricted-scope versions of academic research problems that the professor and/or TAs were actually involved in.  This was a nice motivator for students, since they could see how what they were doing related to a real scientific problem.
The applied option was similarly relevant to industrial R&D. For example, the machine learning project's applied option was typically to build a spam filter against whatever turned up in that year's "wild-harvested" corpus.  Students met with their TAs multiple times got guidance while working on the project, and were coached on how to produce a good technical report at the end.
These projects also gave a nice path to getting talented and interested students involved in research as undergraduates.  We made a point of reaching out to students whose projects were particularly good and offering to help get them connected with undergraduate research opportunities.  Many ended up working joining the professor's research group, and many others joined research groups of other professors where we helped make introductions.  A large fraction of those went on to grad school, and at least some to faculty positions (though I don't think anybody ever did a proper quantitative assessment). In effect, doing a "trial run" of working on research-style projects in class both helped students discover interest in research that they might not have realized, and also helped reduce the risk for professors to take them on afterwards.
The main challenges in doing this were:

selecting appropriately scoped projects, complex and interesting enough to give the students a taste of research, but not requiring deep background or more than a few dozen hours of work, and
making sure TAs were sufficiently advanced as grad students to be able to coach the students well.

Very interesting suggestion. Did you have any problems with students in the intensive section requiring significant amounts of extra help from you and the TAs?

@dionys I was one of the TAs---I wouldn't say that we had problems with them needing extra help: the extra time we had to invest (several out of class meetings per student) was part of the design.

In my field (chemistry, Germany) the Master courses usually include research practica. The topics are usually posted by PhD students and postdocs and are side-issues of their research. These practica are actually part of the regular schedule for the studies, they lead up to the research work for the final thesis.
The big advantage of this is that the students learn how to do research. Actually, I don't see how they should be able to their final thesis (which is always research) without ever having done this before.
In my experience the most dangerous pitfall here is to expect that the student will be productive in the sense that after the student worked a few months, they have more scientific output than their supervisor would have produced in the time they invested in teaching/supervising the student. This almost never happens*. It helps to recall that the practicum is part of the teaching to the practicum supervising PhD student/postdoc, the PhD student's supervisor and to the head of the practicum (who'd often argue that the students help their supervisors as there's usually rather a surplus of students than a surplus of projects).
As @jakebeal says, the advantage for the supervisor/TA (or their group) is that this is a great way to find good and motivated students. And for the students it is a great way of finding a group they want to join for their final thesis and also a possibility to find a sub-field they are interested in.
* unless the student is assigned slave work instead of learning how to do research.

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Appropriate to write to the head of a department to ask about potential openings?
I am a tenure-track Assistant Professor, coming up for tenure next year (no concerns about getting tenure). There is another university I would like to move to. Their department is of similar strength to my own, but is a better fit for my research, and is in a city I would rather live in. However I don't have any personal connections with any of their faculty members.
Is it appropriate to write to the department head, express my interest, and ask if there are any anticipated openings? Would there be any point in doing this? Thanks for any insights.

You certainly could.It's a low-risk action with the following responses in roughly descending order of probability (assuming you're looking for a tenure-track job, and not just an adjunct/visiting position):
1) The e-mail is ignored. Chairs get many strange e-mails about things that are unanswerable. This goes into the e-mail folder labelled "To respond to when I have much more time than I do now"
2) The Chair writes back with a polite letter thanking you for your interest but that there's nothing in the immediate future, promises to write to you if there is, and then promptly forgets about your e-mail which gets archived along with the other people who wrote the same.
3) The Chair writes back saying that there's an opening for exactly someone with your specific research interests, teaching background, and desired seniority. They were going to have an open search and advertise this on all of the usual sites, but because you're such a perfect fit, they're skipping straight to hiring you.
I should add that #1 and #2 combined represent about 99.99% probability and #3 only happens once in a millennium. But again, the risk is so low that you could do it and buy a PowerBall lottery ticket at the same time and see what happens.

On a more serious note, many job sites have 'alert' functions that will let you know when a job that meets your criteria pops up. I'd subscribe to those. In the meanwhile, I'd become chummy with that department if possible so that you can hear about any gossip about spots. Or try to impress them so much that they decide to do a targeted hire with you in the spotlight.

Could I convince you to say "once in a millennium" and use "millennia" as the plural?

Well, I suppose the OP is more realistically hoping for something in between #2 and #3.  "There is a good chance we will be hiring in your research area in the next couple of years.  I'll let you know when our opening is posted.  By the way, are you interested in coming to give a talk in our colloquium?"

In any case, it would certainly behoove the OP to start cultivating relationships with people in the target department.

I suppose it depends on the level of the institution/department. We wouldn't offer spots on our colloquium schedule because someone local wrote and was available unless they were rather well known.

Thanks RoboKaren and Nate. I think the hypothetical reply that Nate proposed is probably indeed the best case scenario. And yes, I need to cultivate relationships with them, I'm just not quite sure how to kickstart them. I was on an NIH study section with a key member of the department recently, but unfortunately it was a video-conference, so no chance for chit chat or schmoozing.

While I have no experience in working with a university I do work in corporate and I think I can make an accurate suggestion by comparing this to my corporate experiences.
Contacting another corporation (University) about possible openings is absolutely okay but it matters how you approach it. First, I would contact the department head and tell them about who you are and what you do while also expressing interest in that university. Tell the department head that while you love your current position you believe that the city where their university would better yourself because of your research and x,y,z. After that you can ask if they know if any positions are currently open or will be open in the near future that you could possibly inquire about.
The point of doing this is it establishes a network between you and the department head, and if you don't contact them you may be in a long pile of applications when the university opens the position publicly rather than the department head possibly giving you a heads up. The department head may also offer you advice such as how to increase your chances of a transfer to their university and what not.
I hope this helps.


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Is there typically a pre-screening process for doctoral admissions in the US?
I am applying to doctoral programs in the US and I am wondering: is it common for applications to be filtered before they reach the hiring committee?
In the typical selection and admissions procedure for doctoral students, what happens after the deadline for applications has passed?

I'll leave actually answering to the people working in the US, but, yes, there is generally a pre-selection by administrative staff based on the formal criteria before the admission committee actually sees the applications.

@xLeitix: Thanks for your attention. Do you think it is appropriate to write an email to the departments to ask if this is the case?

Longer answer later, but yes, graduate applications are typically pre-screened to make sure they are complete and satisfy minimum GPA, GRE, and TOEFL requirements, before they reach the committee.  I don't see any point in writing the department; the answer is almost certainly YES.

What are you worried about?  That your application will be automatically rejected, for example on the basis of low test scores?  If the department web page doesn't list any fixed requirements you don't satisfy, then it's not worth worrying about.  If it does list requirements you don't satisfy, while leaving it unclear whether exceptions are possible, then you could write to ask.  (But exception policies are generally specified on the web, so you shouldn't ask unless it is genuinely unclear.)

@AnonymousMathematician: Thanks for your attention. One of the schools I am applying to set 100 as the minimum TOEFL scores. But my TOEFL scores are near 90.

For US universities applications are almost universally prescreened for completeness and meeting any stated minimum requirements. The prescreen in process is almost always extremely rigid when minimum requirements are set. The wording on website is often confusing since sometimes schools want to be able to make special acceptances to people who do not meet the minimums. This requires someone from the department to beg and plead with the admin team. One place there is generally no flexibility at all is TOEFL requirements. It would be perfectly reasonable to call/email the department and ask, large departments get many such requests every year. Just realize that the answer will likely be the minimum is the minimum.

Although it's hard to say that there is a "typical" process, most PhD admissions are handled both an administrative staff member (often with a title like Graduate Program Administrator or Officer) and by an admissions committee made up of faculty.
The administrative staff will generally filter applications. For example, if applications are incomplete (e.g., missing grades, test scores, or recommendations), the administrator will often remove these applications from the pool. If the department has firm requirements (e.g., minimum TOEFL scores or GREs), the staff will often remove applicants who do not qualify from the pool.
This smaller pool will be reviewed by the faculty. In many departments, this will be by the graduate admissions committee who may then reach out to individual faculty members who seem like potential advisors to strong applicants. In some other departments, the files of students may be sent directly to potential supervisors by the administrative staff.
Faculty will usually be able to see the unfiltered pool but will not often look at the applicants who have been filtered out by the staff based on the most objective criteria of application completeness or eligibility.


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Good idea to name the keynote speaker of a local conference at which my paper was accepted to be presented?
I am applying to doctoral programs in the US, and I am wondering:
Is it advisable to name the keynote speaker of the local conference where I presented a paper recently?
The keynote speaker is a well-respected expert in my field, and I thought of mentioning his participation in order to highlight the merit of this conference in my statement of purpose.
It seems to me that only a conference with a certain level of importance would be able to get such a reputable expert as a keynote speaker.

If the conference is well-known enough, then it isn't necessary to name the keynote speaker, because the conference will be recognized regardless. If the conference isn't well-known in the field, name-dropping is going to come across crass and not very helpful.
So in either case, I don't see any advantage to name-dropping.

Thanks. But would it hurt? I want to name it because the conference is local and I think a conference has a reputable expert as a keynote speaker only if this conference is important enough.

@Kurt "a conference has a reputable expert as a keynote speaker only if this conference is important enough" This reasoning is a stretch.

@Kurt the speaker may be there just because he happens to live close, be in the area, or be friends with the organiser; not necessarily because the conference is good.

@Kurt Or because they got a nice speaking fee---see my answer below.

In addition to aeismail's answer, and to stress his point a bit further, you should probably not do this. There are a number of reasons:

It provides only very weak support for the story you are trying to sell ("This conference was really quite good, because ... at least one important person attended when they paid all costs for her/him."). Really, there are way too many reasons why a famous person might attend a meeting. Maybe the conference organiser is an old friend of the famous person? Maybe the meeting is at a nice location, and the famous person just wanted to have a nice beach vacation, all expenses paid? Maybe the famous person simply was unaware that the meeting was in fact terrible until it was too late?
It sounds like you are absolutely desperately fishing for something good to say about this conference. A reader will wonder why you found this typically irrelevant tidbit of information so important that it had to be mentioned specifically. Is this really a train of thought that you want to invoke?
It is just not something that is typically done, and doing something against convention in your CV / application material always has at least a small risk in itself that it will not be looked favourably upon, for reasons that you cannot always predict. A good example for this is the h-index. Two or so years ago, I would always report my h-index, basically assuming that people would either ignore the info (if they don't believe in bibliometrics) or value the information (if they do). In the meantime, I figured out that there is a significant group of people that I would really anger just by mentioning the h-index, and so implying that it has any relevance whatsoever. I am not saying that mentioning the keynote speaker of a conference is the same, but it is sometimes hard to know in advance who will be annoyed by what.

And, most importantly, I think the chance of this information having any positive impact is so small that it is not worth the paper space, even aside from the reasons above.

Do not add the keynote speaker to a listing.  Unfortunately, the quality of a keynote speaker has nothing to do with the quality of a conference.  The problem is that even top people are often willing to lend their name to a dubious venture for money.  Low quality or predatory conferences often attempt to puff themselves up by trying to bring in famous keynote speakers, especially ones who are well known but past their prime.  In fact, you should be very suspicious of a conference if it has good keynotes but unknowns on its program committee.
If the readers respect the conference, it will stand on its own.  If it is not good, nothing will save their opinion.

Let us be fair: not only for money. It can happen that the presenter is a close friend or collaborator of one of the organizers. Also, the presenter may be on a "tour", building relationships benefiting his program, his institute or any other political reasons, or just came to a large conference somewhere in the neighborhood, and therefore accepted an invitation for a talk in a satellite-conference. A local conference has limited budgets and reach, therefore has fewer "star speaker" and lower quality than a international conference, but it doesn't automatically mean it is a predatory one.

If you had a nice conversation with this speaker at the conference and admire her work, that might be worthwhile to include on an application in a section where you're explaining your interest in the research topic.
However, it's probably better to be extra careful about naming the keynote speaker or other prominent researchers that you haven't been directly involved with. Depending on how you write your application, you run the risk of implying that you are connected to their work. This is something people hiring PhD students pay attention to and will check up on. If they contact this person and they haven't even met you, that is not going to reflect well on you as a prospective hire.
The fact that a respected individual attends a conference or agrees to speak at a meeting is not a tacit endorsement of everyone else that attends the conference.


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What is a letter of teaching philosophy?
I am currently looking for jobs (lecturer in Mathematics) and I have been asked to include a "letter of teaching philosophy". Could any of you please explain what this is or point me to a reference? I couldn't find much after a Google search.
What should I include? I understand what my teaching philosophy is. For example, this includes:

Preparing slides.
Going from General to Particular.
Presenting examples.
Encouraging students to participate (e.g. by saying "well done!").
Pointing out additional references.

Are this sort of things what I am supposed to include in the letter?

The list entry "going from general to particular" reads more like an didactic concept than a teaching philosophy for me.

You might want to read the teaching-statement tag wiki

I believe the marked duplicate addresses your question. After reading that, if you still have a question, please [edit] this post to reflect what you have learned and what specifically you are unclear on.


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How do grad schools look upon students with chronic illnesses?
The chronic medical illness has affected my ability to take the most rigorous schedule and led me to withdraw from one class and also take a year break in my undergraduate education.  I'm wondering how this will affect my grad school chances. I have excellent LOR and GRES, good GPA.  Should the illness be discussed in SOP or elsewhere?

Note that if you are applying to a US school, the Americans with Disabilities Act may apply (even if you are not an American).

Please refer to the related questions tagged with graduate-admissions and health-issues. While not exactly your situation, a lot of the advice given there may help you as well.

Do any of your letter writers know about your illness and can speak to your strength in spite of it? If your application on its face is strong (ignoring the withdrawn course and year gap), a mention of your illness and overcoming it in your personal statement (not your statement of purpose!) might be a good thing to do. I do not think they will look down upon you for this, quite the opposite. From what I have read, they cannot discriminate against you simply based upon your illness so that shouldn't be a problem (see ADA). If it's clear that you're dedicated, I think you'll be okay.

If your letters are good, you have research experience (if that's common in your field), etc., I wouldn't disclose at this point. While they can't, and in most cases won't want to, discriminate against you, it creates an awkward situation precisely because they can't ask questions. At most, say you had to take a year off because of health issues. You can always disclose in the future if that becomes necessary.
I say this as someone with a highly visible disability who disclosed while corresponding with potential advisors but not in the application.


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How do I cite a screenshot I've taken of a software program?
How to write a proper reference for an image I'm going to use for my thesis?
This image is a screenshot of a software installed on my own PC and I am the one who took it myself. It's not from another website.

Why would you need a reference for your own image?

Wait, I actually don't need to put the reference? Because the examiner wrote to put a reference to it on revision.

You may want to check with the creators of the software and see what they have to say about this: just because you took the screenshot yourself doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with the image.

Isn't 'fair use' applicable in this case?

The reviewer doesn't know that you took it yourself. Perhaps put something like: (Source: Screenshot by author).

I know the math software Sage has a page devoted to citations, referencing works citing Sage, and some information on how to cite Sage. You really should check to see if your software has something similar; it could even be a symbiotic relationship, as that website shows (you cite them, they put your work on a fairly small list).

You don't need a citation if it's your own creation like the rest of the thesis.
However, per your comment, it sounds like you included an image but then never referred to it in the text (no e.g. "As shown in Figure 1,"), and the reviewer might want you to fix that.  The image must be relevant to some part of the text. Otherwise, you either have an irrelevant image or the text is missing something important.
You might also want to be sure you describe what the image is, what the name of the software shown in that screenshot is (and if appropriate, any citation to the software).
Did you use the figure in a publication (e.g. conference paper)?  If so, you do need to include a citation to that paper.
If none of those things are what the reviewer is referring to, it may be the reviewer thinks you're using somebody else's image and you can just respond to say it's a screenshot you took.  This might prompt an alternative explanation of what they're looking for.

It's confirmed each of my images is referred in the text. Perhaps examiner thought I'm a careless one and forgot to put it. I did have a lot (really a lot) of spell errors and incomplete bibliography after all. Thanks for the clarification.

I would include the name, version number and citation to the software you've taken a screenshot of, e.g.:

Results of a photon analysis in Glomer 2.4 (Tur et al., 2014) are shown in figure 1.

That way, your reader can replicate your screenshot easily -- if they read your thesis years later, Glomer 4.0's interface might be very different, but they should be able to hunt down a copy of Glomer 2.4 and use that instead. The citation might be a publication describing the software or the citation of a website describing it.
Of course, if Glomer is something you've produced as part of your thesis, this is unnecessary (e.g. "I created Glomer 1.0, a software application to ... Figure 1 displays its main menu, where ...").

When referencing a screenshot, just write below or above it like;
Fig. 1: Adopted from (Source)


text:
In the US, if I cannot finish my PhD in 5 years, will I lose my stipend and have to pay for my own living costs?
The contract says financial support is for 5 years. I am not able to support my own living cost.

It depends on what country this is in, what field, whether your supervisor has extra funding, whether your supervisor thinks you're making reasonable progress, whether you can help get external funding for your work... lots of variables that make it impossible to answer here.

USA. I found that quite a number of students need 6+ years to graduate.

You got the living costs covered??? Man was I ripped off by my Ph.D. program!

What contract?  Contract with whom?  Does this "contract" say anything about your specific question?  Why are you signing a contract?  It's rare for US Phd programs to give you a "contract" to sign.  Please edit your question to elaborate on the relevant aspects of your situation, and explain why you think this is something generalizable that is not limited just to you.  Usually a one-line question is typically not a good fit for this site (often it indicates that additional information needs to be provided).

I doubt it's a contract.  Typically it would be an offer letter and people have found out the hard way that it is not binding at all upon the department or university.  Usually the department would in good faith try to do whatever they promised.  If they have funding issues, you'll be lucky to get the five years and you certainly won't get more without some finagling and maneuvering by your advisor.

as a point of information, some schools will count external fellowships against your 5 years and others will not. This is something to consider even if you don't currently have one. Say you get an NSF fellowship your 2nd year, in one case you have 8 years of guaranteed funding while at many schools you won't. Do ask.

I believe in the Humanities, a Ph.D. often takes much longer than that.  And students may receive no stipend at all.  To earn a Ph.D. in film criticism, be prepared to support yourself while you study.

You need to ask someone in your department (your advisor, or whoever is in charge of the graduate program).  Five years is pretty good, and it's unlikely they will guarantee more than that, but departments vary in how they handle students who outlast their funding:

Some departments simply cut people off.  At that point, you have to support yourself through loans, savings, or a job (which could be an outside job or extra teaching, depending on what's available).  This can be quite a burden, and it's an incentive to graduate in five years.
Some departments will offer an additional year of funding if they can afford it and think you will make good enough use of it.  It's not guaranteed, but it might happen if you need it.
There may be other sources of funding, such as your advisor's grants or a dissertation completion fellowship.  Whether this is feasible depends heavily on the field and your personal circumstances.

There's no generic answer, and nobody on the internet can tell you which of these cases might apply to you.

Question: let's say you find a job and find some way to support yourself. Do they generally go ahead at some point and kick you out of the PhD program? Or are you in it more or less until you finish or leave voluntarily?

@Mehrdad: There is no generic answer to this either.  Some departments impose hard time limits, others do not.  Even for those with hard time limits, there is sometimes a way to extend it (such as by taking leave of absence).

@Mehrdad. According to my university it had a time period where you had to finish or be kicked out. Whether or not it was actually adhered to depended on the graduate chair, which can change over the course of your graduate career. The answer is sometimes you never know until you get there, as policies in your PhD program change during your program sometimes.

The only correct answer is "possibly."
If your contract says 5 years, that means they're only promising you 5 years. Beyond that, they are within their rights to refuse to offer extra funding.
Depending on how well-funded your advisor is and whether he/she believes you're making acceptable progress, it may be possible for him/her to fund you beyond 5 years.

Also depending on the school, I think.

This very much depends on your institution and your professor.
In some institutions (particularly many European ones), there is a very strong expectation that you will finish and get out in the time allotted, and you may well lose all funding.
In others, it means that after the guaranteed period, it will be up to you and your professor.  This was the culture where I did my Ph.D.  My funding was only guaranteed for two years, if I remember correctly, but I actually spent seven years as a graduate student, and that was a fairly typical length in our department.  As time went on, I got more involved in securing my own funding, eventually becoming the primary writer on a couple of funded NSF grants (though not the PI, given that I was just a grad student).
You can try to find out which is the case by asking people at the institution.
In either case, however, I would recommend against worrying about it in the beginning of a Ph.D., particularly with a nice long five-year guarantee to work with: a healthy department and good advisor with either type of culture will help to steer you to an appropriate path to graduation, and five years is quite a long time.

Just to share an Australian perspective: A PhD scholarship is typically three years full-time. After that, traditionally there was an easy-to-get extra 6 months of scholarship (although this may be getting harder to get with increased pressure being put on timely completion). After that (i.e., 3 years and 6 months) getting a further 6 months scholarship is rare. At the university level it would typically require exceptional circumstances. Alternatively, occasionally supervisors will have additional money to pay the scholarship for an additional period.
More generally, when PhD students go beyond the scholarship period and need money, they combine work with finishing their PhD. Naturally, there are a whole range of ways that this is done. Generally, by the time you reach this phase of your PhD, you will have a range of marketable skills. In some cases your supervisor, department, or university may have teaching or research roles that are suited to part-time or even full-time work.
The challenge is to keep the money flowing while at the same time getting enough sustained thinking time to finish the thesis. I've known a few people at this stage who stopped working completely in order to get a solid few months of thinking and writing time to finish the thesis. I've also known others at this point who never finish their PhD because full time work takes over and they never find the time to dedicate to finishing the thesis.

Usually this means that you will lose funding from the University. However, there are always professors with grant money.
You should spend your first few years networking and finding a professor with funding and research interests similar to yours and then try to get them to hire you as their research assistant.
I also know someone who took 9 years to get a PhD because he was able to work as an instructor and get funding from a different budget from the one they have to fund TAs.
In other words, if the department wants to keep you around for longer since your research looks promising but needs more than 5 years, they will help you find the funding. If it looks like your research isn't going anywhere, stopping your funding is a way to gently nudge you out.

I'm about to enter into my fifth year (next fall). However, I entered my program with just a BA, so I had to get my MA with thesis en-route to the PhD. I also had to take 4 years of classes. I will be proposing my dissertation at the start of next Fall. There's definitely pressure to finish, as in you get the gentle tap on the shoulder that it's your time to graduate. I'm excited about it. However, rarely have I seen a student, even who entered with an MA, finish in 5. I've never seen a student loose funding. In my department there is no shortage of TAships to be had if your advisor is in between grants- though there is no guarantee of funding.
I don't know if I'm the only one to notice this, but it almost seems like when the department/labs are flowing with money students finish much slower. When money is good I've seen a year or two added to students' timelines some what arbitrarily under the auspice that "It takes the time it takes to get a PhD." Whereas, when money is tight students fly out of the department. Maybe standards for dissertations drop to get people out the door? I'd like to think that doesn't happen, but I often wonder if keeping highly-skilled cheap labor around to do something with the data that a PI is collecting from a high-profile grant is often an implicit factor that impacts students' trajectories. In which case it is not uncommon to see students in their 6th or 7th year of the program receive funding.

Disclaimer: I never did a PhD, however I was a staffer so take this with a grain of salt. The university does not want you to fail. its got a lot of money and resources invested in you, especially so with your supervisor. Theres two competing forces at play here. The first is the universitys incentive for you to succeed. This can be things like patents, marketability of successful research, continued funding, and of course prestige. On the other hand universities are somewhat resource constrained entities, you need to balance against this triage of resources. If the risk outweighs the benefits of continuing funding its not going to look good. Whether this is determined per case or via policy will depend on your institution, but whats important is you make a CASE for yourself and why you research is worth their money. Whatever the case is, you need allies in your department, starting with your supervisor and going up the chain. Get them excited for you.


text:
Citing an author who changed his name
I am writing a homework at the moment. One of the authors I cite, changed his name from A... to B... due to marriage (I know him personally).
In the Bibliography I clearly should use the name given in the papers (sometimes A..., sometimes B...). But how should I refer to him in the text?
"B... also mentioned...[1,2]" or "A... also mentioned...[1,2]", where [1] lists him as A and [2] lists him as B.
I could imagine calling him B and remark in a footnote, his former name was A. What do you expercienced authors think about this?

I would distinguish between narrative and citation. In narrative text, it is best to refer to a person by their current most preferred scientific name. In citation, on the other hand, it is best to provide the information that will best guide lookup of the document in various search and databases.
When the two are not clearly connected,  giving a footnote or parenthetical note will help make it clear to the reader that the difference is intended and not accidental, but it is not strictly required.

The part about "most preferred scientific name" deserves emphasis. In particular, when somebody changes their legal name, they don't necessarily change their scientific name.  It's possible that although the OP's friend has changed his name for legal / social purposes, he may still be using the previous name for professional purposes, and for instance, intends to continue publishing under that name.  The OP should check with their friend to see what he plans to use as a professional name.

@NateEldredge is spot on -- I've seen both options used, both in academia and insustry.  In academia changing one's professional name is uncommon once a publication record is established.

@Chris H: In the case of changing their gender (rather than simply getting married), most people change their names unless they were lucky enough to start out with a unigender name.

@PeterShor good point, though this question was about a name change through marriage.

I agree with the answer above. Cite papers using the names they were published under, and add a footnote or other indication in the narrative tying together the apparently different authors in the citations. I once wasted a lot of time chasing a reference because the paper I got it from used the author's currently preferred scientific name in the bibliography, but the paper was actually published under a different name (the author had changed her scientific name in the meantime). It would have been much better if the citing paper had given the correct name that the paper was published under, with a note explaining that the two names belonged to the same person.

This seems more like an comment than an Answer. A Stack Exchange works best with distinct Answers that address some specific aspect of the Question not already addressed by other Answers. I suggest deleting your answer to avoid down-votes; re-post as a comment. One goal of a Stack Exchange is to avoid rambling repetitious discussions.

@Basil: Comments have a tendency to be deleted arbitrarily by overzealous moderators. I think this is significant enough that it could be left as an answer.


text:
How should I list my advisor's name on a talk I am giving about our joint work?
I am very new to this...
I need to give a short talk at a conference soon, on which I am going to talk about something my advisor and I work on together.  Alphabetically, he should go before me, but would it be confusing since I am the one giving the talk?
Should I just list my name and put "Joint Work with xxx" on the title page?

You should discuss with your supervisor, the first author has the most contribution to the paper/oral presentation/...., the second the second, etc...

@MikeyMike That's not true as a general rule. See What does first authorship really mean?. It's important to remember when answering questions here that Academia varies, so as to avoid giving advice that is wrong in the OP's situation.

@MikeyMike, only in some fields. Authorship order means different things in different disciplines.

Couldn't you go clearer? Like F. Surname, Advisor: Dr. Professor? Or that would be weird? boldface for your name, representing "I'm the guy talking" works fine too.

If you are in mathematics, there is no notion of "first author", so you can ignore alphabetization. You can put your own name on the first slide as you normally would, and then elsewhere on the slide add "Joint work with XXXX." Here's an example from a slide talk I gave:

A common way to address this kind of problems is to highlight on the title slide who is the speaker among the authors (e.g., by underlining, bolding or by assigning a different colour).
For instance, you can write the list of authors as

A. Boss, H. Student

Or use an asterisk, underline, or italics to highlight the presenter.

In my own field, the person who had done most of the work (including probably having the idea, doing some analysis, and writing the paper) would safely be the first author. The person presenting the work could be any of the authors (but preferably it would be the first author), and normally their name would be __ underlined __ on the title slide. In some unusual cases, a non-author might present (eg visa problems, illness, etc). In such cases, a special note would be needed on the title slide. In cases where the first authorship is confusing, eg because one person had the idea and did all the analysis, but the other person did all the writing, it is less clear cut, and you need to discuss.

You can discuss this with your advisor first, however in many fields, the advisor name goes as is the last name (by default not by contribution percentages). Also, since you are the student (you need to identify that when you start presenting yourself), you can still go first (in my field [civil engineering] it is common for students to go first as it is a general knowledge that advisors let their students go first in conferences/posters). It is even common that the conference paper will list that advisor and student as the first and second author but names can be switched in the presentation (if presented by the student).

Given that the OP said "Alphabetically, he should go before me" and the OP is also active on Mathematics and Math Overflow, I think it's likely that the OP is in mathematics, where alphabetical ordering of authors is standard.

I understand, maybe others from different fields can benefit/relate to my answer. The OP needs to edit his/her question and add mathematics (maybe)?

I think the question is really asking "How to list authors on the title slide of a presentation when the first author is not the presenting author?" I don't think it's asking who the first author should be, so this answer seems like an answer to a different question.

"Also, since you are the student (you need to identify that when you start presenting yourself), you can still go first" I didn't say who should be first! It is clear that he can be first since he is the presenter and his adviser is ok with it. He can even clear the air and say that his advisor could not make to the conference (in both scenarios).

Being the presenter doesn't imply that he can be listed as first author, if the tradition of the field is different. In addition, in a conference you rarely identify whether you are a student or not, and the fact that he is the presenter doesn't either imply that the advisor could not make it to the conference .

There is a large difference between being a first author due to standards, most contribution, presenting or other events/incidents/scenarios. Once we clear which is the case, we can arrive at a GOOD answer.