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Removing one whole chapter of my thesis is suggested (required)
This is a bit of a long story. I am a graduate student working on mathematics and the topic I have been working on is not directly within my advisor's expertise (pretty closely related to though). My thesis basically consists of two parts which deal with two related but independent problems. At the beginning when I chose these two problems to work on, I was kind of discouraged by my advisor as he thought these problems despite interesting did not seem reachable. But actually, when I decided to work on these problems, I already had some rough ideas on tackling the problems.
Anyway, the first part was basically done in last summer/fall which I also presented my proof orally to him. For the second part, he was once kind of skeptical of my proofs, however, his confusions and doubts seemed to be resolved through our conversations, email exchanges and my improvement of the exposition. I sent him my first draft in April (I was supposed to submit my thesis in June). In late June, when I had to submit my thesis, he said he had not really finished reading my thesis.
After my thesis was submitted, he told me that my thesis was very badly written which made him not even able to follow my work. But wait, he had two months to take a look at my thesis but he had not said a word about that every time we met. Anyway, my thesis defense was thus delayed for two months and in these two months I was constantly asked to make changes big or small on the thesis. At certain point, my advisor seemed to  feel my thesis was in good shape and I should arrange for the defense.
Alright, I did the defense in August and it went well. But recently I received my thesis feedback report in which my advisor suggested that I should remove the whole second part from my thesis because he thinks that my proofs/arguments presented there are not solid enough. I always appreciated when he could point out specific mistakes/confusions I made in my thesis. But it seems that after all of these have been resolved, he is still not convinced that there is no gap in my proofs. I really do not know what to do now.
Should I argue with my advisor or should I simply follow his request to remove that chapter and get my degree safely?

I suggest using paragraphs. Anyway: what is your next career goal, and what part of the world are you in?

Is he willing to approve it and let you graduate without the chapter? Is the rest sufficient?

Have you asked a near identical question here before?

@cag51 I still hope and plan to continue my research in the same field.

@Buffy Yes. He said the rest already makes up a good thesis and that "problematic" chapter should not be included , though I don't really feel like to ..

@BryanKrause No.

What did the other committee members say/write after the defense? You might end up in a situation where they do not want to approve the thesis without the part that your advisor wants removed. (Which is why in a sane system, the committee discusses changes and makes a single feedback report of what to change.)

It is very likely in your interest to follow your advisor's advice.  The timeline you describe suggests your advisor has been highly irresponsible (or impacted by the current pandemic) about providing timely feedback, but this is not a reason not to do what they recommend.
In academia, you will be judged on your publications, not the content of your thesis.  Removing content from your thesis to please your supervisor will not necessarily prevent you from publishing that work, so the downsides of a shortened thesis are limited.

We were in the middle of a pandemic, so "highly irresponsible" really does not seem accurate.

I do want to continue in academia. It seems to me the content of my current thesis would affect my applications. Also, if I do not even try to argue with my advisor but simply follow his request to remove that part of my work away from the thesis, does it mean (at least to him) that I admit my proofs presented are problematic?

@user129757: When you apply, you can link the extended/updated version of your thesis rather than the version you submitted at your defense. PhD students link their unpublished preprints all the time; this is no different.

Congratulations on your (presumably) successful defense, and sorry to hear about the timing issues.
Two important points are not mentioned here that may affect what you should probably do:

Is the advisor the only remaining gatekeeper to you getting the degree?

Do you wish to publish or pursue this topic otherwise, and are you interested in improving your mathematical writing?

Frankly, given all the delays (regardless of what caused them), if you just need your (seemingly) overworked advisor to say "yes", and they are prepared to do that if you remove a chapter, my first reaction is just to get that done and then figure out what to do with the rest!
If you need to still satisfy other committee members (may or may not be relevant in your geography/institution) and they don't agree, then welcome to the world of academia, where we end up in that boat all the time with reviewer feedback for submitted articles!
If you do want to work in this area and continue in academia, then don't stop there however. Regardless of what prompted the initial delays, advisors don't throw up their hands in frustration at whole chapters, after a successful oral defense and some back'n'forth, out of sheer laziness. You probably have something interesting there, that came across strongly in the oral defense, but continues to not be written clearly enough to hang together for a reader trying to make sense of it. You have doubtless had the experience of reading published papers where you sort of follow each paragraph but you're banging your head trying to make sense of it all. It sounds like your advisor might be in the same boat with your chapter, and has now moved to pragmatically trying to push you through.
If that is the case, and you do want to continue with an academic career in mathematics, you should probably work with someone to continue to polish this and therefore learn how to write more clearly. Perhaps not your advisor (since it seems hard for you and them to achieve this, based on experience), but perhaps someone else? And if you do so, there will be absolutely nothing wrong about having more results than in your official thesis, and/or a richer preprint or 2 preprints instead of one to show for it.

"advisors don't throw up their hands in frustration at whole chapters, after a successful oral defense and some back'n'forth, out of sheer laziness."  False.  Most don't.  Good ones don't.  But it does happen.

There are other committee members but my advisor is certainly the gatekeeper.  2. I wanna continue my research in this direction as well as to improve my current writing. I also agree that working myself or with someone else to improve the quality of my writing is a good idea. But what also concerns me is that if I do not even try to defend for my work, my recommendations  from my advisor or other committee members in future applications (if I ask for them) will be weakened. (actually, I doubt if my advisor will write me a good one based on what we've been thru last few months....)

Good answer, but the problem with contradictory reviewer feedback is somewhat overhyped: Usually, in those cases, editors expect you to be the judge in whose advice you follow. Theses might be a bit different, but in general the rest of the committee (i.e., the non-advisors) don't care much about the thesis to begin with and thus won't hold it up.

Keep in mind that you can always post an updated version of your thesis on the arXiv (or, if this wasn't mathematics, at various other places on the internet). Thus, you shouldn't pay much attention to what thesis you submit at your defense; you can always "beat" it with an arXiv revision. If your advisor has doubts about a chapter while believing the rest of the thesis to be already sufficient, there is nothing easier than just submitting the rest to your university and then posting the full version on the arXiv. (Just make sure to document that the full version is an update.)
Independently, if you haven't already done so, I'd suggest you get some outside opinions (apart from yours and your advisor's) on whether that fateful chapter is actually rigorous or not. This is probably useful anyway, seeing that your advisor is a stranger to the topic; it would get you familiar with people working in the topic.


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Relevance of Research Papers from another field for Grad Admission
I am a student of Indian nationality, currently pursuing my bachelor's in Electronics and Communication Engineering. I wish to pursue a Ph.D. and later a career in astronomy (with an inclination to Radio Astronomy) and have done relevant research internships and projects in the same. However, I have no publications in this area.
Alongside this, I have worked on research in antenna engineering with a professor in my institute and we have published 2 papers in international conferences.
My query is: for graduate admissions, will my research papers in antenna engineering have any value and consideration or are only research papers in Astronomy looked out for?

Yes, that would have value as antennas are important to astronomy.  Beware that there are few jobs in astronomy.

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When do I start contacting professors for PhD?
Although I have seen a lot of questions similar to this, my situation is substantially different. I want to pursue a Ph.D. but since the deadlines are soon approaching for this academic year (most of the deadlines are in December) and due to my lack of readiness (partially due to my poor planning and busy schedule) in terms of not having written GRE and preparing my SOP and LORs, and most importantly not having contacted any professors yet, it is highly unlikely for me to pursue Ph.D. from fall 2020. Is there any chance universities accept students for Ph.D. for spring 2021? Furthermore, when should I start contacting professors i.e emailing them? Is it okay to start emailing them a year in advance?
P.S - I only have a bachelor's degree in engineering.I am currently working in a lab (mechatronics to be precise). I have done some research work but do not have any publications yet, although I am writing a patent on my work.

Not really, but I only have a bachelor's degree in engineering. I've heard that only the U.S and U.K accept a direct Ph.D. without masters (I prefer the former in this case). I wouldn't mind applying elsewhere if they don't require masters.

UK positions are advertised at all times of years, usually you don't really need to (actually, shouldn't) contact the professors until the positions are advertised, and can start at any time of the year (there are PhD students in my lab that started in January, April, August, September, and even early summer I think)

This really depends on the University and department.
European universities will more often accept PhD students at random times of the year. American ones are more standardized because a PhD student is actually more like a student than an employee and will therefore normally do courses (i.e. a masters as part of a PhD).
Since you don't have a masters yet, you may therefore need to apply for one of the more standardized programs that start in the fall.
But also consider that some universities (again mostly in Europe) will let you apply just a few months before the fall or even just a month. In such a scenario you will definitely need to be in touch with your supervisor before applying.
Aside from that, it makes sense to be in touch with your potential supervisor as early as possible since they can then get a better sense of who you are and it helps them see that you're specifically interested in them. But you need to individualize your email by reading some of their papers first.

I would be surprised if PhD programs admitted students in the Spring semester. at least as far as I know in the US there is a single application cycle each year.
So, as far as i understand it, if you can't pull off an application for Fall 2020 then you're essentially looking at applying for a Fall 2021 start. You'll have to wait for the next yearly cycle. Sorry.

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Is it okay to include a graduated phd student as a reference in resume/C.V?
I'm trying to apply for a PhD and want to include references in my resume. Is it okay to include a PhD student, one who has gotten a degree and has worked in our lab,and is currently working in industry, as a reference?

Has this PhD student completed their PhD or only earlier degrees and is still waiting to defend?

He had completed his PhD after defending his work

Yes, they can, but consider whether they're the best choice:
A referee needs to be your champion. A lab mate who you've never worked with probably can't do that, because they don't have a working relationship with you. Someone you've worked with can. (It's unclear which case applies here.)
Senior referees carry more clout than junior referees, so that's something to keep in mind.
Having referees from both industry and academia can be useful—it depends who the recipient is: A theoretician will surely be less interested in a referee from industry than someone more applied.

I have worked with him in the past, it's just that he completed his PhD about a year after I joined the lab.

Why “former”? Has their PhD been revoked?
As to whether to include them, if they can vouch for your skills, abilities and/or experience then there is no reason why you should not include them.

Former in the sense, he isn't working in our lab any more. Maybe I should make it clearer. Thanks

@blazingcannon well, some people are awarded a doctorate for lifetime work and have never been a PhD student...


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Standard recommendations and steps for writing introductory books
Suppose I plan to write an introduction to, say, statistics that's intended both for self-learning and as a companion to a university course.
Is there any standard advice about the following?

Defining the scope of the book
The planning of the writing process
Organising the table of contents
Models for organising the content of each section
Maintaining coherence in the writing style across the book (especially when writing in co-authorship)
How to write exercises/problems
Models of interaction between content and exercises (and lessons)
Any other topic related to the writing of a book like this

The answer should to be useful for introductory books for which these questions apply. However, the answer could use statistics or any other field as an example.

I think you are looking for a book or a course, not an answer that can be provided here. Too much to ask.

What are you hoping to achieve? There are lots of introductory statistics books available, at least in English, so the answer to your questions would depend on your motivation for writing another.

Thanks, @academic. I've chosen statistics just as an example. I was more interested in knowing what recommendations or models are there for an expert in a field who wants to write an introductory textbook. Maybe I should ask each (or some) of these questions separately?

@lfba My primary advice would be to teach a course in the subject, multiple times. Your textbook can start as notes which you distribute to the students, and refine it from there.

If you are an expert in any field then you should be able to define the scope, and structure the material in a logical progression to benefit the beginner - one of the advantages of being the “expert”...

@lfba  I'd be interested in the answers to some of your questions since I'm about halfway through what I hope will be Yet Another introductory textbook in my field.  I am particularly interested in the two questions relating to problems or exercises.  For your own purposes, however, the comment on teaching a course by academic and the comment by Solar Mike are bang on.

I remember the foreword to Engineering `Thermodynamics, Work and heat transfer by Rogers and Mayhew, where the authors thank current and past students for working with chapters as their notes, and also doing all the example and practice problems included in the book.

My recommendation (having done something like this) is to first teach one or more courses in this area for at least five years before writing your text.
Start off in year 1 by making slides or notes for your lectures using LaTeX. If you post those, you will have an incentive to get them right (and students will also find some errors). Fix the mistakes as you find them before year 2. After year 2, consider changing the organization or splitting up some material if students have more trouble with it.
After five or more years, you will have come up with a sensible organization of topics. You will know how to foreshadow and set the exposition up for later developments; will be familiar with common questions and misunderstandings; and, will have exercises already written (with answers).
Then write the book using your slides or lecture notes as a skeleton and incorporating the exercises you found helped students the most. (Don't forget to thank the students who found errors.) You can also add in topics you wanted to cover but previously did not.
As I mentioned, LaTeX is your friend for this. With the right organization, it can make your table of contents for you (as well as a table of figures and tables), create an index, and show a list of references with clickable URLs (if you create a PDF file).
After that, teach a couple of classes using the text and you will find areas to improve. You will also likely see tweaks to make your old slides/lecture notes fit the text better.
As for publishing, you can choose an academic press or self-publishing. Both stink.
An academic press will not do much editing, will probably re-type all of your hard work and introduce errors, will charge a high price that students may not want to pay, and will likely give you no revenue; however, they will distribute the book widely (often to libraries).
Self-publishing using a print-on-demand place will get you about the same amount of editing help, will earn you zero credibility, and will receive far less distribution. However, you may actually make a little bit of money, you will have much more control over pricing, and nobody will retype all your work and introduce errors.
I know people who have done both and most thought both options were not great but more seemed to be considering self-publishing because academic presses seem to offer so little for services now.


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Should I invite my idle team mates to participate in our project discussion with our professor?
I am about to deliver one year-long project assignment I've been working at my undergraduate school. This was a group project, but out of the three of us, I was the only one to do work on it (100% of it). There were two team mates with me, let's call them X and Y

X was idle all the time -- he would seldom answer messages and stopped entirely after a certain point
Y was new to the field, and overwhelmed by the coursework. I recognize other courses kept him busy, but in the end he too produced zero amount of work

That being said, should I invite them to discuss this project with our professor/tutors, pretending we did it all together, or just declare myself as the sole worker, and why?

I find it hard to believe that the professor would just turn you loose for a whole year without giving you any support. Have you had any supervision or discussion about this? Have you requested any?

The realization I was going to work alone on this project came after months -- probably about six. Yes, my professor and the two tutors that will be evaluating the project wouldn't always be available for discussion -- I asked them yesterday and just spent a mere two words on it.

I fear there is a big misunderstanding in the way I phrased my question. I am not asking whether I should let them see the project (they can already) but whether we should meet together with our professor the day it will be evaluated.

Pretty sure that undergraduate studies are outside the scope of this site.

In an ideal world you would have worked this out with the professor long ago. But you can't turn back the clock.
Depending on the project and the professor's expectations, declaring yourself the sole worker can be a terrible solution. Especially if the prof was expecting you to learn about teamwork.
I suspect your best course is just to turn it in and not discuss process more than necessary.
Whether you discuss it with them or not is another matter. I don't know what your goals would be in that. I don't actually see much positive that could come out of it. Since they are nominally on the project they need to see the result, I think, before it is submitted.
But, your professor is partly to blame here for not monitoring your work more closely.
Unfortunately, out in the real world, this is often the outcome on joint projects. Sometimes for good reasons, though not always.

With the comments, I'm not sure, now, about your real concern. If you are worried that you will be downgraded because you didn't actually work as a team, then it is what it is and there is a record of it in the logs. But if the prof is happy that somehow the work got done, even if all by one person, then you don't seem to have any risk here.
The prof has established a process for evaluating your work. If it calls for a meeting of the team with evaluators then you will just have to do that, but be honest. Dishonesty often leads to the worst outcome. But if it doesn't require such a meeting, don't offer one. If you are happy with the work your grade will properly reflect your work.
But, it might also be a mistake to claim, in a meeting, that all the work is yours. It would be better if the team mates first give an honest appraisal of their own contributions. If it is honest, then it is clear that the work is primarily or wholly yours. But that is better coming from them if they are willing to be honest. If you meet with them, I'd suggest you let them know that you will be honest with the evaluators and not try to cover for them.
Your team mates may have to offer explanations about why they didn't participate, but that is "on" them, not you.
If you were my student, I'd be unhappy with you, but I'd also realize that this is a learning situation. My unhappiness would be, primarily, that you didn't let me know earlier so that I could help you formulate a team more effectively.
The tone of your question, however, doesn't raise another issue that sometimes occurs. Sometimes a "team" member will just cut out the rest of the team and do the work him/herself, ignoring the others. I don't see that here, of course, but it is something that professors need to watch for and halt when it occurs. Team work is an important skill in computing, but it isn't the most natural thing in and educational environment where students are often forbidden to work together before they reach this stage. But it needs to be taught, and that is the responsibility of the professor.
The actual project code here isn't the most important thing. Learning is. Learning about systems, certainly, but also learning about process.
Again, in the real world, a manager would probably be happy that the work was done, no matter how. But in the real world the product itself has a much higher value than the process. But a professor should be much more concerned with the learning, compared to the product.

Agreed, but to add one caveat: if there is some portion of this project that requires you to peer evaluate your teammates' contributions or something along those lines, don't lie on it. If this is an element of the project you're in a tough situation indeed.

I pushed them to do work for months, until I saw no response. Unfortunately for them this was a software project, and it was versioned, meaning we have a log of the work done. In that log entries only my name appears. Should I also take the effort to hide the log, a valuable project asset that could contribute to grading?

That should be answered by a computer person, but I would generally advise against any effort to "hide" what has happened. Present your work, don't volunteer information, but be honest if asked.

It is what it is. Don't hide anything.

@Buffy, if I show the log, then I'm almost explicitly telling "look, only one person of these three did the work". Why should I bring my mates with me then?


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Did I lie to my friends about how long I have been studying?
During my freshman year of college, I had some academic difficulties and ended up switching programs. I then had to take a semester off, during which I visited a class as a guest. So, I am now in my fourth semester of calendar time, though my academic standing is that of a second-semester student.
My question is: what should I say when someone asks me how long I have been studying? I have been saying that I am a second-semester student, but this is not really true, and it seems likely I will be discovered and called out. Did I lie? If so, what should I do if I am called out? I do not want to lose my friends or lie to anyone.

Why do you think you have to lie? Stick to the truth and you won't make mistakes...

I didnt want to tell them my whole life story when asked for how long I have been studying and how I didnt even manage to matriculate properly.

Also I do not want to lie to my friends. I just dont know what to do or what to tell them.

Welcome to Academia.SE. I found your question immensely confusing and tried to clean it up -- please feel free to edit your post if I got any of the details wrong.

@SolarMike When the truth is complicated and possibly embarrassing to you, it often makes sense to think about how to present it.

@Nobody how to present the truth does not need lies...

If you're in germany, switching programs after two or four semesters is considered normal enough. Depending on context, people who did so will tell you their semester count at university ("Hochschulsemester") or their semester count in their current program ("Fachsemester"), often enough without clarifying which count they mean, exactly. Without that distinction, both numbers are correct, so you're not even lying.

I'm not sure why you think this is an important issue.
"It's complicated" is enough of an answer if you want to be honest.
But small lies in this context do no one any harm and may ease social situations. Some simple questions such as the ones you get aren't worth the effort of composing a complete and complex answer. It's complicated. Say more to those you think need to know more or those you are closer to.
Don't sweat it.
If there were any issue at all in such a situation it would be overselling your skills to those you need to work with on a joint project. But you don't seem to be erring on that side here.

Thank you. This really helped alot. I was a bit stupid and couldnt think of it´s complicated as an answer. Now you have made a lot of social situations easier for me.

Maybe add, "It's complicated, but the short answer is I'm finishing my first year [or whatever]."

Definitely what @ElizabethHenning said. Answering just "it's complicated" will come across as stand-offish, and will likely lead to more questions.

I had an answer like this as well, due to having transferred from a community college to a university and then switching programs. I would reply with, "Well, I'm a senior by credits, in my junior year, and I'm taking a sophomore level course." It was only the one class that was sophomore level and only because that class ran once a year in the fall and I'd missed it when I changed programs the previous year.

You are overthinking.
Most people you meet do not remember or do not care about such an issue. No person I know in real life would "confront" you about such a trivial issue in the sense of "You lied! Tell the truth immediately!". They would rather ask you nicely if you went to the course before and then you can tell as much from your story as you want.
(Indeed, if you met somebody new, just tell them the parts of the story which are important -- do not tell them immediately this whole thing, this would be very weird and most likely to turn the person off.)
If somebody really gets "angry" (or similar) towards you for "lying", its them who do not understand social interaction, not you.

Just say that you are doing second semester subjects and that you have been auditing other classes. Chatting and connecting on subjects tends to be the bulk of the conversation so you would still be able to socialize.
Remember those students that are inconsiderate and want to know more about your personal circumstances, you can refuse to say and deflect as others have said here "It's complicated" etc. However, since you have said that you are auditing or being a guest in subjects, most considerate people would appreciate that your story is more complicated and be sensitive to your difficulties. Not many people spend time as a guests or audit courses without a "complicated" reason. Students that are not thoughtful, you can deflect and talk about course material and feel free to cut them off.
There is stigma against mental health issues, academic or personal difficulties etc, so do not feel guilty about protecting yourself from judgement. Your story is yours alone and you have learnt a lot from your experience.

To people you haven't know long and don't want to explain:

I've been on this course for 3-semesters

If you feel dishonest about it or want to clarrify, just add to that:

I am a second-semester student. Although I switched courses and then took some time out of formal study, so have been at he school 4 semesters now.

It's all about how much you want to tell the person. I doubt that there will be any negative impact to you being "found out" later down the line, because nothing that happened was wrong and your answer is just a shorter version of the truth.

There are 2 reasons why you might get asked this question in a social setting (except for small talk):

In early years, it is common to estimate age by asking the class you're in. At least in the communities I've been a part of, it was very common to avoid the question of "what age are you" and replace it with "what year you're in" or similar.
This can set the level of discussion, if the subjects are shared. For example, it might be the case that you find out you're in the same class, and thus discuss subjects you share or complain about your teachers.

But, keep in mind that there is no shame in changing subjects. Everybody makes poor decisions at some point in life and everybody goes through difficult times that impact their academic or professional performance.
You could shortly describe "I've switched topics, now I'm second semester of xxx". Even if you decide to say just "second semester", any confusing situation that might arise can be easily clarified by additional detail. Keep in mind that this is not a lie, you are in the second semester of studying one subject.

I can think of another reason to ask, which is that they're being sociable and trying to get a feel of how long your current studenting has been going on for, as part of their picture of you. But I basically agree, the trick here is to identify what they really want to know about, as opposed to just what they're asking, and give an answer that satisfies them while leaving out the detail the questioner doesn't want to give.

I mean, if they literally want to know the answer to the question "how long have you been studying here", then the answer is calendar time you've spent enrolled at the university. For instance they might want to know whether you could have been affected by the building works that plagued them 2 years ago, so the answer "2 years" would be right, and it would be irrelevant where you are academically. So, you just guess what will answer most people's curiosity most of the time.

Know your audience and their purpose!
Are they more focused on your age or years of experience with the campus (in which case leading with the 4 semesters is better), or focused on how far you are in the program/estimating how long until graduation (in which case, stressing the 2nd semester level of classes is more important.)
Examples of the first (4 semesters) being a more useful metric: when you know a special place near campus with a discount only in spring semesters, or an interesting part of campus that's often overlooked, or some of the campus faculty/staff know you a bit more than expected -- when you need to establish you have stronger ties to the CAMPUS and COMMUNITY.
Examples of when the second (2 semesters) is more useful: If someone wants to know when you will graduate (often for internship/job interview purposes), when they want to get a sense of what parts of the program you know or don't know, if it's an upperclassman in the program trying to give advice about what's ahead.
Pick a script
For phrasing, you can say something like "Basically, I've been here 3 semesters already..." or "Basically, I'm in my 2nd semester..." -- the "Basically" (or "It's complicated, but..." as others have listed) indicates there's more to the story, but this should answer their question.
Source: for my Undergrad, I'm "Class of '95, graduated '96" (It's a very set program, but I had to take a calendar year off senior year... so my degree is 1996, but 3.5 years of classes were with the other class.)  Also, due to a weird program I went to, I basically have no high school, but twice as long for college (just for the Bachelors). So I have experience with having the awkward academic experience that's not in lock-step with the rest of the world, and trying to explain it.  Just knowing WHAT to say for a brief encounter made me feel more confident, kept the explanation brief, and I didn't feel like I was rambling with unneeded particulars all the time.

Firstly, by definition of "friend", your friends aren't going to be upset by this. Not by you delaying your studies, and also not by you over-simplifying the details. It's just about plausible that some fairly petty people, who you temporarily think are your friends, would be put off by it, and this would be the way you find out what they're really like. But them's the breaks: you'd find out sooner or later anyway. I recommend just assume your friends will be friendly unless there's a strong reason not to be, and this is not a reason.
Secondly, your statement "I am a third-semester student" I guess isn't entirely accurate in every context, since it could be interpeted as a technical statement about your academic standing. Specifically it suggests you've already passed two semesters and are working on the third, when in fact you've passed one and are working on the second (apologies if I'm wrong on the details there -- my degree wasn't in the US and didn't use the same system). Not that many people deeply care how many course credits you have, but it's more likely to lead to confusion, when people make assumptions what courses you've done or can do next. So it might be sensible not to use those exact words.
Then again, if they asked how long you've been studying because they want to know, as a friend, how much of your time you have put into this so far, then "this is my third semester studying" is a truthful answer and it tells them what they were interested in knowing. Or, if they want to know, as a friend, when it was you first started university studies, then "I started two years ago" is a truthful answer in that context. Possibly they want to know all of these things, and are assuming that they're all the same thing because that's true for most people they know. Well, you're a very slightly atypical case, so there's no way to truthfully tell them a number: "my academic standing, and my time spent studying, and the time since I started studying, are all this number". If they're assuming that, they've made a little mistake, haven't they?
If I ask a simple question with no simple answer, and get back an approximate answer for the sake of avoiding a massive info dump, well, normally I'm going to thank you for not occupying my time rather than "call you out" for anything! But, unless this is all so painful that you want to completely hide it away for the time being, I suggest don't try to give that simple answer that fits into the "rules" they expect. One or two sentences is not too much to answer a question that expects a single number, but there is no single number.
If you are called out by someone you've already told, "I am a third-semester student", then I would suggest either go into the shallow details or else plead privacy and walk away. Likely it's better for you to choose the former. If someone cares that much about the details, you may as well take the time to spell it out. So maybe: "I started two years ago, I spent one semester on X; the next semester was a washout for reasons I don't want to go in to; then I spent a semester attending classes as a guest; and now I'm on program Y, in my second semester as a full student". If they're hostile and trying to trip you up or make you give them private detail you don't want to share, you might choose to give up on them and keep quiet, but that's a pretty extreme scenario.
Even if they're sympathetic, you don't have to go beyond the shallow details if you don't want to. It's none of their business really how it came to be decided you should guest for a semester. However, people are always curious, especially about those doing "the same thing" as they are (studying) but with minor differences from their experience (semester out, semester as a guest). So, if you're comfortable talking about it at all then maybe that's a fair second or third conversation, rather than the introductory "hey, my name's Dude" conversation.
For future introductions, and maybe to "correct" any misunderstandings with the people you've already talked to, focus on summarising the information that's actually important. If someone asks how long you've been studying, then they might be interested in all sorts of things about you. So, OK, it's a tiny bit complicated, but they're not actually asking why there was a gap in your study, so you don't need to get into your life story at all. You could say, "I started study in 2017, but I had a gap so I'm currently second-semester". If you really don't want to talk about the gap at all (or you want to justify saying "third" in the past and "second" now), you might want to gloss over the gap: "I've switched programs, and because of that I attended some classes that didn't count, so I'm officially second semester".
Oh yes, and although I've given example phrases, don't learn an exact formula what to say, because people will end up asking different versions of the question, or talking about other stuff where the same information is relvant, but your formula won't always fit and you sound like a politician trying to dodge a question. Decide what you want people to know. Think of at least one way to say that, so you're clear what you're going to focus on. Then don't mention the rest of it.


text:
Thesis contributions: where/how to specify them?
I am a physics student and I am presently writing my Master thesis.
My work has been a theoretical/numerical analysis of data produced by a simulation written by my advisor.
I would like to write explicitly somewhere that I wrote all the programs for the data analysis and performed the analysis itself, but the simulation code has been written by my advisor.
Where/how should I include this remark?
The thesis is structured as follows:

Contents
Introduction
Methods
Results
Discussion and Conclusions
Appendices
Acknowledgements
Bibliography

Why do you want to explicitly say that you wrote/did the data analysis work yourself? Unless you state otherwise (e.g., by providing a citation), it's typically assumed that everything you report in your thesis was your own work. As for your supervisor's simulation code, unless there's a citation for it, or you intend to include a url to the code, I'd be inclined to just leave it as an acknowledgement

@Ian_Fin Yes, of course it is assumed. I just meant that I want the different contributions to be clear.

Short answer: wherever you first mention the data, you can mention how the data was produced.

Usually that is included in the Preface, which comes in the beginning of the thesis. Some call it 'Declaration of Authorship' instead of 'Preface'. See for example these guidelines.

Unless otherwise stated, it is reasonable to expect the reader to assume that everything discussed in your thesis is your own work. Therefore I do not see a need to explicitly state your own involvement in data analysis.
Concerning your supervisor's code, there are a few options.

One thing to consider is whether the code has been published, or has previously been used in other published work. If this is the case then you should cite the publication(s) in the text.
Is the code available online? If so, I would likely provide a footnote providing the url. You could mention in the footnote that your supervisor is the author, but perhaps the code already contains a reference to its author.
If the answer to the previous two questions is no, then I would likely mention in the acknowledgements that the supervisor had authored the code.

A caveat
In some cases there's a distinction between writing code and creating the process that the code performs. For example, imagine I write a piece of code that performs a one sample t-test. I am the author of the code, but I'm not the creator of the t-test. I'm assuming that if your supervisor's code is implementing someone else's ideas then that person is being appropriately credited as well.

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


text:
Applying for Phd at two different departments, in the same university, but very relevant fields. Would it harm my admission?
Biophysics and Condensed matter physics interests me. I am more inclined towards biophysics.
Would it weaken my application if i applied to both the biophysics program (Biological sciences department) and the condensed matter program (Physics department) in the same university? I want to apply for Condensed matter, in case i didn't get accepted in biophysics, i might get accepted in condensed matter.
P.S. I have a Bachelor's degree in theoretical physics.

I know a question similar to this was asked before, but i guess my case is different. I believe that biophysics and condensed matter physics are very related to each other.link

Depending on the university, it wouldn't matter what you applied to, because a bachelor's degree is not sufficient for entry to a doctorate programme. Please add sufficient detail to the question to make it answerable.

@Nij - What country are you talking about?

@MohamedAyman - I would frankly be surprised if anyone would even notice you had put in an application to another department in the same university.

@aparente001 my own. I do not wish to make this explicit.

@Nij - Sorry, I didn't mean to pry.  At any rate, "a bachelor's degree is not sufficient for entry to a doctorate programme" does not hold true in the U.S.

@aparente001 not a problem. As per original comment, the question is not detailed enough to make the assumption of a location, hence the need for that particular aspect of the asker's situation to be made clearer.

@Nij I am sorry, i should have made that more clear.

I would see no harm in doing so. I view it as akin to applying to different schools when you first start college. To gain a better understanding, I would contact the graduate office at your school about multiple applications to different departments. Policies do vary from campus to campus.

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


text:
Is this level of citation acceptable in a dissertation?
Please can anybody reassure me that I am okay. I have been so distracted thesis that I’m behind in my revision for my finals.
Never once in my project did I take credit for something that wasn’t mine and I referenced all my sources of information and ideas.
However, instead of citing the same source over and over again I stated at the start of some chapters something like “the content of this chapter is mostly sourced from chapter X of book Y, but I add some details to proofs for clarity for the reader”.
I then go through my chapter and state the results and proofs I am interested in without further citation (unless I use a different source which I of course cite). I follow the proofs fairly closely and have my own extra details for clarity.
I submitted my project to TurnItIn which has highlighted in red a fairly substantial amount of material in some of the proofs. This is really freaking me out as I’m not trying to claim the proofs as mine or anything - I literally say at the start of the chapter where the material is sourced.

Why would you include content mostly sourced from chapter X of book Y?

Because the content is from that chapter except for an example I invented and and two other results in the chapter

Following from the above: There's no value in replicating material, your grade will surely suffer, but perhaps we're missing something.

The standard formulation is: This chapter mostly follows [The Big Professor 2019]. This indicates that it does not contain new material, you may want to say that the material becomes relevant for later discussions.

@DanielHatton It is not unusual to see this in mathematics theses, especially master's theses.

It sounds like the way you did the reference was fine and perfectly standard practice in mathematics. And I doubt Turnitin is remotely useful for mathematics anyway.
The more important question is whether what you did meets the expectations of your committee, and you'll have to ask them that.

Thank you for your reply. I was starting to get quite worried when people were saying I was going to get a bad grade. I confirmed with someone that what I did is what is expected of me.

You are assuming that TurnItIn makes a decision on plagiarism. It just finds sub-strings of a submission in other publications. Their existence might be indicative of plagiarism, but it is subject to human interpretation.
I cannot guarantee that some instructor would not look beyond a TurnItIn score, but I with many other professors would not think such behavior to be reasonable. As usual, the best advise is to talk with your thesis advisor.

It highlights some portions of the proofs that I used when writing my project - however I do say at the start of the chapter where the material I present is from.

@Gabi23 The problem is that all mathematics proofs use a lot of the same language.

Is this level of citation acceptable in a dissertation?

the content of this chapter is mostly sourced from chapter X of book Y, but I add some details to proofs for clarity for the reader

No, it is not.
But it seems unlikely that your paraphrase is an accurate reproduction of the type of your citations to which you refer.
If you want to know whether a style of citation is acceptable in a dissertation, then you need to show an exact, specific example of such a citation. To ask whether something is acceptable, and then not reveal the object of your query, is unlikely to lead you to a helpful answer.


text:
Postponing internship confirmation from Student end
I have received an exciting research internship offer from a professor but have simultaneously applied for certain funded research internship programs as well whose results I am awaiting.
I want to let the professor know that in spite of my interest in working with them, I first want to weigh all my options and choose the best from them in terms of opportunity, experience, and funding. I want to convey to the professor that although I am thankful for the opportunity I can let them know my confirmation to the internship only at a later date. Can someone suggest to me a polite way to do this?
The internship is from May and I can confirm only by March 2021.

How long do you expect to need before you can confirm? Is it a couple of days or more like a month or maybe even longer?

Do you know this professor personally? If so, can you meet with them face to face?

@Buffy I do not know the professor personally, I had mailed them for an internship after checking their research interests on the institution website, and am from a different country. However, coincidently the professor had previously collaborated with a professor whom I am currently working with.

I suggest asking your professor how to approach the other. Most (I hope) of us will understand your desires/needs and accommodate them if possible and if other things (deadlines) don't get in the way.


text:
Confused about potential supervisor response
I asked my professor to supervise me. I took several courses with him. He replied to me that he is confused about whether he will have enough time to supervise me. He is extremely busy though! I wanted to ensure that I will take minimum time.  Is it okay to reply in the following way?
"My previous collaborative research experiences will help me to work independently. I believe that I will require minimum time from you"

To me this sounds like a polite rejection. Depending on your culture this may differ.
If you push harder, likely either you will find a stronger rejection (though this isn't necessarily a bad thing, just confirms where you stand), or in a worst case scenario you will convince them to supervise you but you will never receive the supervision you need and find yourself like many of the question askers here who can't get advice from their advisors when they need it and find themselves lost in academia.
An active supervisor is much more useful to you than a "best professor" who never answers your emails.
I would probably respond with something like, "It sounds to me like you think you are too busy to take me on as a student, and that I should find someone else to supervise me. Is this correct, or should we plan to speak again in (several weeks/a couple months) to discuss?"

It is "okay" to say something like that. But words aren't likely to be very effective in such situations. It would be better if your previous collaborators could intervene on your behalf here, assuring the professor that you are capable of carrying on independently.
He is right to be cautious. If he can't give you the help you need when you need it, it is you that will suffer.
While you continue to try to convince him, you should probably also look at other options.

@Byffy He is the best professor in the department. What is the best way to ensure him politely?

@Simpson's Paradox I would show them my previous work/publications to show them that I am autonomous or accomplished. For example, if you wrote an entire MA thesis after only three or four meetings with your supervisor, that would give the new professor the idea that you won't need so much of their time. But really think if you won't want that much of their time.


text:
How to ask politely to a potential supervisor?
I have some initial conversations related to the scope of the research area with my potential supervisor. I took a course with him as well. He knows me well too. I asked him to supervise me in my first e-mail. He did not tell me his opinion though. However, I am not sure he will take me or not as thesis student. How can I ask him politely to know about his consent to supervise me? I appreciate your help!

I did not see similar posts here!

You don't need any special wording or "politeness" beyond what is normally expected of adults. Tell him that you would like him to supervise you and that you are interested in the research area you discussed. Ask, explicitly, if he is willing and able to take you on.
If there are other considerations, such as funding, that he controls you will have to bring that up, of course. In the US, doctoral student funding is normally handled at the department level, though there are exceptions in which a professor funds students from grants. If you aren't sure, ask.

I asked him in my first conversation, but he did not tell me his opinion!

Perhaps you weren't explicit enough and made it sound somewhat hypothetical.

I asked him clearly!

We have been exchanging e-mail back and forth! But he did not neither confirm neither deny yet!

If you have asked him clearly, then just wait. Professors are busy people. You can send a remainder after a week or 2.

Did you ask in person or by e-mail? If you in-person asked "Will you supervise me?", and they did not answer, I would be worried.


text:
Should I complain to higher authorities about the incompetence of this teacher?
I am a Computer Science freshman. The instructor of one of my programming classes, where they're teaching Python, is absolutely incompetent. I have been programming since high school and I can tell.
After giving a very bad introduction to Python in the online classes, all they do now is give a list of questions to solve and sit back. The first day this happened, I solved every question and was told to explain everything to the whole class. I did and that was the end of the class. No contribution from their side, whatsoever. Basically, they are finding ways to somehow get by, and seem to have years of experience at it too.
I feel something needs to be done. My first thought was to complain to the authorities, but if nothing is done and they stay, I may have a hard time when I go to college (I was talking about the online classes, remember?).
So, what should I do?

I chose the word "incompetent" because it is an apt description of the said instructor. That is what you call a programming instructor who doesn't know what a return statement does or how to iterate over elements of a sequence (programmers will understand how basic this is).
I wonder how they even lasted this long.

At last, I figured I should just mind my own business. I talked to my classmates. Turns out everyone was having the same problem. We complained to the department head. The course is being restarted, but the instructor is the same. I don't know if it was even worth the effort.

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

How long have you been programming? If you are a freshman, and have been programming since high school - that could mean less than one year.

First, talk to your classmates and find out if they feel the same. It could be that you are simply ahead of them and that the others actually appreciate the class.
If many fellow students have the same impression, you can try to do something about it. First, you can talk to the teacher and indicate that many of you think that the level of the class is too low. If that doesn't help, you (as a group) can go to the head of department, study coordinator, or whomever is in a position to change something. It may help to approach a person you know well (who may refer you to someone else if necessary).
If your university is any good, they are probably very much interested in critical (and constructive) feedback from the students. But it may be hard for them to make those changes instantly.
I have been in a similar situation as a student and the entire course was changed after the feedback we gave with (almost) the entire class. But it only helped the students of the following years. They could not do much to fix our class while it was already running unfortunately.
Of course, nothing stops you to learn more advanced subjects on your own (useful for later) and ace the exam.

Recruiting a group of complainers seems passive aggressive to me.  I also doubt the head of department does not know about it already.

@AnonymousPhysicist I think it's good to know whether other students are experiencing the same frustrations as you or not just to make sure it's a real issue for the class and not just a personal issue for you.  And the chair may or may not know about this, but definitely nothing will change if no one reports problems.

This is a good answer, and I certainly disagree with @AnonymousPhysicist's comment. First, the head of department is certainly unaware of the day-to-day substance of most classes, if this is like any department I'm aware of. (Keeping abreast of classes would be a full time job itself.) Second, if a large number of students agree with the criticisms, it demonstrates that the complaints are substantive. Faculty in general do not like to hear whining, but they do want to hear thoughtful (and well stated) concerns; gathering many students indicates the latter and not the former.

@RaghuParthasarathy The head of department will have seen teaching evaluations.

@AnonymousPhysicist assuming there were any.

@DanM. assuming the students even did them.

@AnonymousPhysicist I don't see anything "passive" aggressive about it. It is quite active.

This needs to be done as a group, and there is nothing "aggressive" about giving helpful, constructive feedback as a group. It shows genuine interest and will be seen as positive by most people involved. A single complaint does not carry any weight (there is always this one complaining student), but if the entire class gives constructive feedback because the course is not good the university will take this very seriously and make changes. The only right thing to do is to let them know, with the purpose to help them and the next class.

@RaghuParthasarathy The HoD almost certainly won't know the specifics of this class, but they will know if the Prof in question has a  general reputation for poor quality teaching.

This is more of an extended comment, placing some guesses as to what's actually happened here. As an answer to the question it is the advice to consider which parts of the following applies to your situation, and adjusting any actions you may take accordingly.

Keep in mind that computer science is not programming. This instructor likely doesn't code much Python in their main job (CS research presumably), nor did they necessarily ask to teach Python. Rather, the departement decided to teach Python as a beginner language, and somebody needs to do that teaching – somebody who knows enough about programming to help actual beginners, which will be helpful to the course's intended audience, but not necessarily an actual Python expert.
You, apparently, are a Python expert, which is great – relax, this course is going to be easy for you, and if you can even contribute to making it better for your fellow students, awesome.
But don't let your superiority in Python fool you into thinking the instructor is inferior as a teacher of a beginner's programming course. You think their introduction to the language was bad... why?

Was it hard to understand? Well, that could mean they explained stuff badly, but surely you as an already-expert wouldn't have had problems regardless?Maybe they actually explained some aspects that really are more tricky than you ever considered.
Was it too shallow? Well, that may be exactly what's right for your fellows without earlier Python background.
Did it use outdated or unidiomatic code? This happens a lot in university courses, but it's not necessarily such a bad thing. Keep in mind that anyway today's up-to-date is just tomorrows outdated and one language's unidiomatic is another's bread&butter. General concepts are more important in a beginner's course than language-specific details.

Regarding your concrete statements,

doesn't know what a return statement does

I plainly refuse to believe that. I mean, if it's really that bad then forget all I wrote above... but almost sure there has just been a misunderstanding here.

or how to iterate over elements of a sequence

That too should certainly not be a problem to anybody teaching anything programming-related, however I would still remark that Python's iterators are somewhat idiosyncratic. It's true that for a Python course, they should have read up on this properly, but again make sure you're actually interpreting this properly. First teaching loops with indices before going to range- / iteratee based ones is a valid pedagogic decision, even if it doesn't make much sense as far as Python programming in particular is concerned.

Upvoted for "computer science is not programming."  The reverse is even more true.

Not surprised if a professor doesn't know or naturally use iterables. Most professors seem to have stalled on syntax as it was taught to them in their schooling, which will be in the C/C++ days for many. In fairness, many of my industry colleagues seem to have the same problem (sure we're using the latest version of Java, but we only use language features that were available in Java 6).

@user3067860 Looking at pseudo code, you can be happy when computer science researchers use C syntax. Usually they are a lot more happy with Pascal syntax like "for i:=1 to N do". Ideas like "a loop can be implemented by a foreach loop using a generator" are nothing you want to use in theoretic computer science literature, because it makes understanding the (pseudo) code much harder for people who are not used to this concept. The Pascal syntax on the other hand can even be understood by mathematicians.

@allo foreach loops are perfectly appropriate for the theoretic computer science literature, just phrase it as “A is a function { 1 … N } → ℤ; we represent it as an element L in the free monoid over ℤ. Consider now a monoid morphism into the category of endofunctors...”

@allo I was a double major, math+cs. I'm pretty sure at least a quarter of my fellow math majors would have had trouble with Pascal syntax, loops pretty much didn't exist for them (except maybe as a way to teach summation and product notation). Brilliant in other respects, but very much did not think procedurally.

"Python's iterators are somewhat idiosyncratic" bit of an understatement XD

"Computer science is not programming." Funnily enough, this is exactly what the people on Workplace SE are complaining about - CS graduates cannot program at all.

My first CS class was "foundations of algorithmics" and was taught in ML, a lanuage for/foreach loops nor return functions. I didn't learn much about how programs are made in the real world, but I sure as hell understood recursion, memory and space complexity, worst vs average case performance, and how 6 different sort algorithms differed from each other.  More directly relevantly, I know many programming teachers who, in an intro class, won't teach idioms that don't exist in the core specification of more or less all languages.

@user3067860 The problem you're mentioning is that very little problems in math require ordered loops. something like i \in {1,...,N} does not imply ordering. For example a sum or product works for any permutation of the indices. A foreach loops looks (in many languages) like a english description, but for i in X uses an ordered X, which is not described in the code. The pascal syntax uses an explicit to, which is a bit more explicit on describing a monotonic ordering.

@allo well, that's what I meant by free monoid (not commutative monoid). Thus the monoid morphism does take care for ordering (but not associativity, meaning you could replace for i in 1..5: action with for i in 1..3: action followed by for i in 4..5: action). The monoid of endofunctors is better known as a monad.

@leftaroundabout Interesting point. But I guess this is getting really of topic here now, so let's just agree that a instructor not knowing the python syntax does not have to be a sign of incompetence.

Having been a teaching assistant in an "Introduction to Python" (which is quite popular now, seems only a few years ago everyone had to learn Java...) for 1st year students some years ago, I hope I can offer you a few perspectives. This is not to try and convince you that your opinion is wrong, only that there may be reasons for you to find this course incompetent, which are outside both your and the teachers' control.
First consider the wildly different starting point beginning students come to this course with. You have been programming in Python since high school. But you certainly also have fellow students who have never written a line of code in their life before. This course is most likely meant to bring everyone to a certain minimum level of proficiency, such that they can understand future course material. For someone with little experience, the best way to get to that point, is through practice. For someone with lots of experience, this means going back to basics.
Secondly, most university courses will not teach you to write code using elaborate techniques or sophisticated libraries, even though this is something that self-taught programmers entering university are used to. They will rather teach you why things are done the way they are, but very much starting from scratch. This is because the skills learned in these courses, should hopefully be transferable from, say, one programming language to another. Iterating over elements in a sequence is a good example. I have had students with reasonable Python proficiency who completely stumbled on that task when changing language to C, simply because they had not understood that the way they did loops in Python is an abstraction.
But all that aside, it is of course very possible that your instructor is, in fact, wildly incompetent. As a general rule of thumb, before making a complaint, ask yourself a) What good will it do me?, and b) What good may it do to others?
Yourself: If you can anyway pass the course without too many efforts, freeing up time to read up on other subjects perhaps, the only thing you will gain from complaining is extra work on your part + perhaps getting a reputation as a person who complains a lot. Given that the course is meant to bring everyone "up to speed", the syllabus itself will likely not change, only the presentation.
Others: In a perfect world, a complaint would do good to future students, who will get more competent teaching. Gauge whether your fellow students - also those with no prior experience - actually get something out of the course or not, and remember that introductions to Python is also something you can do by yourself, mostly online, if everything else fails. So in a realistic world, a complaint might not really improve matters a lot.
So my direct answer to your question is: probably not. If I guess roughly correct, your best strategy will be to keep following the course, get a top grade, and wait for your next course which will be more advanced.

He's saying incompetent, not taught at a very basic level.  There are utterly incompetent teachers out there.

@LorenPechtel There definitely are. However there are also many students that are incapable of judging the teacher, his methods and their own ability/knowledge. Having been to a fairly good school I've seen many many more of the second than of the first. I'm always wary when someone is too confident that someone else is an idiot.

I remember clearly of my time in college how me and my colleagues would pass judgment on what was appropriate curricula and appropriate teaching. My opinion at the beggining and end of my studies was very different, and my opinion at that time is very very different from my current opinion, now that I am in charge of interns. I do recognize a students general intuition of what a bad teacher is, but, not what appropriate paedagogy is.

You have to balance any extra workload that follows from a complaint against the extra work that OP is currently doing.  Based on their description, it sounds like the professor essentially had OP teach class one day. You can't let that become a habit.  OP certainly shouldn't be paying to take the course and teaching it at the same time.

@bta - while I can certainly sympathize with students in a pay-to-learn system who don't think they are getting their money's worth (I am myself in a part of the world where you don't pay for college or university education), I find the whole paying customer mentality rather toxic for a good learning environment. If the syllabus itself had nothing worthwhile for OP to learn in the first place, having him/her teach one day might be the best learning opportunity available. If not to learn Python, then to learn the general level of other students, and how to communicate programming.

@nabla - Even if you're not paying for school, if the professor is being paid to teach the class, a student shouldn't be doing his job for free.

As a freshman, what authority do you have to judge your teacher incompetent?
University classes are different from HS in terms of what pedagogical methods are applied. It is absolutely within reason to expect university students to learn by themselves, help each other, and the teacher to facilitate this interaction.
Switching from an HS model where teachers are responsible for students learning to a university model where students are responsible for themselves may come as a shock to some. Complaining about this is fruitless.
Also, at the university level, it is completely normal if a student shows more knowledge on a topic than the teacher. The teachers are there to facilitate your learning, not to spoon-feed you with their infinite knowledge.
As others suggested, talk to your peers about how they see the class and how much they are getting out of it. If there are shared concerns, bring them to the teacher first.
If you want to get the most out of the course, ask questions to the teacher. If you are the first to solve a problem, ask the teacher on how to improve it in terms of complexity, speed, memory use, extendability, understandability, maintenance etc etc. Create multiple solutions and bring up a discussion on which one is better. Others will also learn from these discussions.
One thing you could do next time is the following: Pass the invite to explain your solution to someone you know is struggling. The struggling student should explain their thought process and, by that, realize their mistakes and give the teacher an opportunity to reemphasize difficult parts.
A sign of incompetence would be if your teacher does not engage in any discussions and are not receptive to any constructive feedback.
UPDATE: If you choose to bring this to higher authorities, your complaints should be that the classes are not helpful to attain the course objectives. Make sure you read them beforehand.

To build on this answer in a pie-in-the-sky optimistic way, OP could use their knowledge to develop a relationship with department faculty, opening opportunities such as TA-ships, letters of rec, research projects, networking in industry, experience with communication skills, etc. All this while helping peers, and opening long-term future networking opportunities with them. A simple change of attitude could completely transform OP's college experience and give their future career a boost.

All of what I described won't come from one interaction, but it will gradually build from the repeated application of transforming skills and knowledge into opportunities.

-1 I really don't like the first sentence. Being a freshman has nothing to do with having authority to judge anything. Also the "argument of authority" is a fallacy anyway. What property do you think anyone must fulfill to "have authority" to judge incompetence?

@PedroA: If you're  freshman, then you don't know what you're talking about. This is like a private saying that a general is incompetent.

@stackoverflowuser2010 In the army, it would be out of order for a private to say that a general is incompetent but they would know if their general (or president) was incompetent.  In academia, it is not out of order to plainly state your opinion that a professor is incompetent.

Teaching problem solving is more challenging than simply explaining solutions to a class. There are methods of instruction that involve giving the class a set of problems to work on, then calling on students to explain the answers to each other. The instructor must choose level-appropriate problems and moderate the discussion of the answers.
It is usually the instructor's privilege to decide how to present the course material. Usually, their teaching is rated by students and occasionally other faculty. If they have "years of experience," their methods may be effective for the majority of students.
What is your goal here? If your goal is to learn the material, you seem to be succeeding since you could solve all the problems. It sounds like you're saying you could teach the class better than the instructor. If you want to be that better teacher, you could work towards becoming a TA or faculty in the future.

Problem-based or inquiry-based learning is a good method of instruction, but if it is not clear to students that is what is going on, then the implementation is incompetent.

"Years of experience" doesn't mean that their methods work well. I had really bad teachers with years of experience. Also, what is the meaning of your first sentence? This person appearantly did not give out solutions, but questions with any help or input.

Not knowing how iterators work has nothing to do with teaching problem solving. Why is everyone here so defensive? This question is not a personal critique of yourself.

Been there, done that. Almost 40 years ago. (Yes, that makes me old.)
Only real difference is that it was Pascal rather than Python. I had plenty of programming experience from High School (and before, on my own). Class was a waste of time. Teacher wasn't very good. etc.
Let me tell you what not to do: Social media.
In today's environment, anything you say publicly online can be assumed to be there "forever". Anything anonymous (good choice here on SE!) is meaningless to the University - you are just, literally, a faceless complainer with no clout. Anything not anonymous will follow you "forever". And yet anything not anonymous won't actually help because to the University you are "just a freshman".
I almost made that mistake - except that there was no Facebook, Twitter, etc. at the time. There was email and (long story short) I emailed the whole class to commiserate/complain as a group. Fortunately, the TA was quite sympathetic (saw my initial emails, gave me a 2nd email address so I could separate my complaining from my real student tasks) and far more fortunately, the teacher, as far as I know, never saw any of the emails. If the teacher had seen my emails and then checked with the TA to find out who was behind them, I would have been in a lot of trouble.
So I got lucky. But hindsight being 20/20, I was a really stupid freshman and should have never done what I did. Breeze through the course, get your A and move on.

This story isn't clear at all. You would've been in "a lot of trouble" for complaining about a course? Why? What kind of trouble?

While I didn't think so much of it at the time (I was a teenager), the kinds of things I (allegedly...) put in emails to the entire class and TA about how awful the teacher was were a bit disrespectful, to put it mildly. Was any of it an actual violation of a "Code of Conduct" - probably not directly, but that's because back then, except for "don't cheat", there wasn't much of a Code of Conduct that I can recall. But if I were a professor and got wind of such blatant disrespect, I would have found a way to punish the culprit.

Not sure where you are located, but it is not uncommon at many places to see totally incompetent instructors.
I myself had many such courses. I'd suggest you to focus on your learning and leave university handle. If they do not ask you for anonymous feedback, chances are they don't really care and this is not your problem... until you try to resolve it.
Funnily one of those courses, I was happy to have an instructor that didn't care a lot. Books were good enough to learn from and instructor let us do whatever we wanted with the equipment so experience was better than anything else.
Now this is not your current experience. Still, just figure out what you need to know by the end of the course and learn by yourself.

Talk to the student's association. I hope your university/department/subject has one. They should be able to have a more experienced student check out the class, know the correct channels and might even have some political clout at the university.
(just complementing other answers because this wasn't mentioned yet even though it seems so obvious to me)

Your question was: "So, what should I do?"
If you decide to make a complaint you should have enough information... enough FACTUAL information to prove a point. Your opinion will not matter unless you have incidents which point to incompetency. This means that you will have to document your experiences in this class. You should keep a log with the basic answers to what, why, who, when, where and how.
Ultimately your decision will be based on your conscience.

Your question implies the instructor is not new.  It is most likely that the authorities at this university are totally aware of what the instructor is doing and how competent they are.  It is quite likely they are employing the best person they can get for the amount the university is able to pay.  Furthermore, the instructor's performance might be reduced by the pandemic, which cannot be fixed.
My advice is that complaining is useless.  However, you could approach the department chair and tell them factually what you are experiencing.  Ask them what you can do to improve your learning experience.  They might have good advice for you.

"It is quite likely they are employing the best person they can get for the amount the university is able to pay." How do you know? This is highly dependent on the country as well. In Germany, lecturers cycle, so there's a different teacher each year.

@infinitezero: What you say about Germany is certainly not true for all universities and all departments.


text:
How to spot abusive/incompetent supervisors in advance
I would wish to have some summary advice for the specific scenario of looking for a new postdoc position and trying to avoid ending up with a terrible supervisor. Let me narrow this question down by saying that the most important thing to avoid would be an unsupportive/pressurizing/controlling supervisor, while competence is much less important. As long as the supervisor is really nice and lenient ("laissez faire"), the rest does not matter. Then again, the real nightmare is of course when the supervisor is both extremely controlling and incompetent. (A controlling supervisor is not that bad if at least they do not pressure employees into crazy and pointless tasks/projects.) The field is experimental psychology (in case that matters).
So far I have just two ideas, but both are far from perfect.
(A) Check how they performed during their first 3-5 years in academia (i.e., from their PhD start), since high output (especially high-quality first-authored articles) during that time is I think a strong indication of competence. (Publications/achievements afterwards are always questionable as people for whatever reasons rising in ranks have increasingly more power and opportunities for potential swindling and extortion.) However, the problem with this is that it is only useful in case of high output, since low output does not necessarily mean incompetence (e.g., they may have had a terrible supervisor themselves), and it has in any case very little to do with being just a nice and decent person.
(B) Ask current and former employees. However, the problem with this is that these people, especially in case of a really terrible supervisor, may be extremely intimidated and/or even brainwashed. This is especially true for current employees, but, in case of former employees, they might simply be happy to have done with the place and might not want to get involved. Also, some may have become accomplices. In general, no one has a strong incentive for telling the truth (to a helpless stranger).

This question is too broad, and could be a shopping question.

I would not think it is too broad, but this may be subjective. However, it is not a shopping question. I am not asking for a recommendation for any individual supervisor, but only about the general approach of how to spot bad ones.

Definitely not a shopping question. A shopping question would be if OP was asking for a list of good advisors. OP is instead asking for general principles for finding a good one

I am not sure how practicable it may be, but during my time as student, some persons made a probe-lecture in their applying procedure. (My role was the listening student, who asks questions.) Maybe there is some possibility of a "practical" test?

And then there are the many complaints here about the hands-off supervisors the OP apparently wants. The problem is that humans are not one-dimensional and human-human interactions are complicated. A supervisor one person likes may be anathema to another.

The only useful thing is to have a face-to-face talk with one of their current students and then see how much they hesitate when you ask them what it's like working with that supervisor.

Jon Custer, you are of course right to a certain extent, but I can say for certain that there are supervisors whom no sane person would wish to have. It is rare, but, if you end up with one, that's a nightmare. And that's the most important point of my question, i.e., how to avoid such really terrible supervisors.

@JonCuster I agree to a certain extent, but there are certain supervisors who are basically known by wide of mouth in a department to be a nightmare to work with regardless of your ability.

"high output (especially high-quality first-authored articles) during that time is I think a strong indication of competence."
If we are discussing indivdual thinking and therefore experiences, I can assure you that your thinking is wrong. I would go as far to say that high output indivduals in the first 3-5 years are individuals who either had a very demanding and competitive supervisor (but this does not say anything about competence) or indivduals who were very aggressive in their publications and exploiting others in projects where they were placed by their supervisors.

@Tom - well, in the US the average marriage lasts 7 or 8 years (similar enough to a PhD length to be frightening?). So half of the couples marrying will divorce by then. Those are two people who one might think spent much more time getting to know each than other than the average post-doc job seeker (or prospective grad student) spends researching a job opportunity. Human relationships under pressure go pear-shaped in many different ways. Who is “at fault” is not necessarily useful to determine.

Ask members from other labs in the same department. You are more likely to get the straight dope from them.

@EarlGrey, what field are you talking about? I've never heard of a PhD being able to effectively exploit anyone. No matter how aggressive they may be, they have not enough power. (Okay, they might exploit undergraduates, but the latter would not likely arrive at high-quality publications without effective supervision.)

@pencroft 3-5 years is the time frame of a overly aggressive phd to get a postdoc and start effectively bossing phds and even other postdocs. Again, we are discussing personal thought and experience, this has been my experience in earth science.

@pencroft additionally, see https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/148490/my-advisor-used-my-research-idea-and-wrote-a-paper-with-another-student-what-sh?rq=1

After you had your in-person interview with the potential supervisor ask if you could talk to some people in the lab. Maybe go for a coffee with someone and just ask them what they think. Of course they will not tell you that this supervisor is terrible but from a lack of excitement and/or sheepish smile you should be able to tell (you are working in psychology after all!).

I have always believed that, for larger, established labs, the by far best metric for overall supervision and work environment quality is looking at the success (or lack thereof) of previous holders of similar positions. Have previous postdocs gone on to good careers (in academia, if that's what you are looking for)? Has the publication track record of previous postdocs improved after taking the position, relative to their PhD work?
Some particular red flags I would watch out for:

Multiple postdocs leaving for industry in less time than the typical postdoc duration in your area (people leaving to faculty positions is no red flag at all, but people quitting their postdoc to go to industry may be indicative that people lost interest in academia when working with that advisor).
Promising candidates not publishing after joining this lab.
Promising candidates publishing much more shoddy work than during their PhD.
Candidates moving internally to working with other faculty in the same university (this is possible in some universities, but often indicative of some sort of fallout).

All of these things are visible, or can at least be guessed, from the outside with some detective work. Sure, you don't really know what's going on specifically, but do you really need to know if an advisor is incompetent, a micromanager, has poor leadership skills, or if postdocs are burned out in grunt work?

Multiple postdocs leaving for industry in less time than the typical postdoc duration in your area I can see why there's a taboo for quitting academia ...

@Allure I have no problem with people going to industry, most people do. But if people start a postdoc and then quit midway to go to industry that's not indicative that they enjoyed working in that lab a great amount.

Oh, I thought you meant the supervisor's students quit their postdocs to join industry, when you mean their current postdocs leave to join industry.

I've seen highly successful academians come out of some real pressure cooker dog-eat-dog postdocs.

@ScottSeidman let's hope they do not consider the pressure cooker as a formative experience (I am unfortunately pessimistic).

@EarlGrey they go on to run high pressure labs, if they survive.

I had a terrible PhD supervisor. Basically none of his students do a post doc. The 'none' (as opposed to some) is a big red flag.

@ScottSeidman high pressure labs are not created out of thin air. More specifically, they usually are labs that would be ok with 4-5 PhDs, but due to overambitious academians (who finally get a stroke or aneurisma or similar blows in their 50s, suddenly starting to realize there is more to life than academic prestige) they are overcrowded with 10-15 PhDs.
Yes, they have so many PhDs becuase they get a lot of funds. Yes, I am an idiot and I am sure it would be better to have these funds more evenly spread out (and higher funds for each PhDs, but I am an idealist that believe in fair wages...)

@EarlGrey -- I can't say I'm a fan of the high-pressure model, but did want to point out that successful lab alumni doesn't always correlate to labs without stressed postdocs/students

You have a difficult problem for many reasons. One is that you probably don't have dozens of opportunities to choose from so may need to take a less than perfect position. Another is that it is difficult to judge from afar, even with feedback from "former employees" whose needs may be different from yours, along with the honesty issue.
It isn't easy to manage, but if you can make face to face contact with some of the professors current students and postdocs you can get a sense. "How is X to work with?" is a useful question, but only if you can see the immediate reaction, including facial expressions. That would give you a hint about difficult-to-work-with supervisors, but the actual answers, if informal and off-the-cuff, might give some indication of how helpful or standoffish they tend to be.
You need to judge for yourself what level of interaction you want in a supervisor and the experiences of others can give you some hint about that, though imperfect. But email exchanges or phone calls won't help much and might give misinformation.
You could, perhaps, sit in on a seminar that the professor leads with current doctoral students an/or postdocs. Just watch for interactions and reactions from everyone.
I think your "A" option is probably not going to tell you much. How they did and how they interact with people might not be highly correlated. There are also reasons for low productivity initially in some (many?) fields, such as getting a new research program started. Too much noise in the data, I'd guess.
But, I don't think there is nay real substitute for on scene observation over a couple of days. Hard to manage, I realize.

Here are some questions you can ask current/former employees.
About the supervisor:

Is he more hands-on or more "laissez-faire"?
How often did you meet with them/how often did you need to report to them?
Would you collaborate with them again?
Can you tell me about the process for your last paper? (Notably how/when the PI was involved)

About the lab:

What is the profile best suited to succeed in the lab? (Anything along the lines of "must be able to bear pressure" is a clear red flag for your question)
How often did you collaborate with other students/labs? (It will give an idea of the degree of autonomy)
What were the authorship rules in the lab? (Sometimes, PIs explicitly define that their name must be added to absolutely all papers, even those where they have no expertise, and that is imo a red flag)

An other indicators can be the diversity of the lab: are there many women? people from other countries? people with young children? Are they publishing/supported as much as other people at similar career stages?

If you have a specific supervisor in mind, you could try asking some of that supervisor's current students what working with them is like. If they give mostly negative accounts, then it's likely that the supervisor would not be a good fit. However, I understand that this is especially difficult if you're not surrounded by people in your lab before you move to the institution at which you will be doing a PhD.
It could also be a good idea to find out where that supervisor's students ended up going after their PhD finished. If most of them decide to quit academia altogether after their PhD, that could be a red flag in itself - a PhD is a challenging endeavour even when the supervisor is good, but if people are being supervised by a particular member of faculty and then thinking "screw this" when they reach the end, then it could be a sign that that particular supervisor led them to the conclusion that academia wasn't for them. A PhD should be challenging because of the nature of a PhD, and shouldn't be unfairly soiled by the person you are being supervised by.
A valuable piece of advice I was given when choosing PhD programmes is that the relationship you have with your PhD supervisor is arguably the most important factor in your success, perhaps more so than how well your interests align. Obviously there's no point choosing a supervisor who you get on really well with if your interests don't line up, but just remember that people are multi-faceted and that just because your research interests might line up perfectly with a certain supervisor, it doesn't mean you'll get on well in all aspects.


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how to format computer code in APA style
If a psychological methods journal only specifies that the entire manuscript has to be in APA style, how should I format computer code snippets in the manuscript to be submitted? I see nothing mentioned in the actual APA manual regarding this.
Is there any convention? In specific I wonder whether or not I should include syntax highlighting.
(The code currently in question is R, but it could also be, say, Python or JavaScript.)

EDIT:
The original question referred to the 6th edition of the APA manual. As HumberSean answered, computer code style is now specified in the 7th edition.

Probably you want to communicate with the journal editor.

If the APA manual does not specify how to format code, then you can't "format code in APA style". Unless the journal has any specific policy, the answer is probably "it doesn't matter, so long as it's sensible and consistent". You could ask the editor, as puppetsock suggests, but I really wouldn't worry about it.

APA 7 provides for computer code: "To present computer code, use a monospace font such as 10-point Lucida Console or 10-point Courier New."
For my APA 6 thesis, I used italics for my coding examples following APA 6 4.20 (a letter, word, or phrase cited as a linguistic example), taking the position that JavaScript is a language.

I’m not certain if there’s an official method of formatting code that’s included in the paper itself, but there’s a simple workaround:
Put your code on a website like GitHub, then cite that website the same way you’d cite any other website in the APA style whenever you refer to the elements of the code you’ve posted on that site.

okay yeah, this may be reasonable for most cases, but my current specific paper is a tutorial and like half the paper is code snippets (ca. 1 snippet after each text paragraph)... so it doesn't really work to replace half the paper with a bunch of links

@Gaspar Not links, citations. You’d be saying “(Gaspar, 2019)” a lot, with the link to the website being in the references. But also, I’m not certain how much guidance that the APA standard would provide for formatting code in a research paper because the APA is the American Psychological Association, so I doubt that they’d have many research papers that include code published in their journals.

yeah that's similar anyway. and yeah not usual but there are many instances in boundary areas with computing and methods. anyway, Flyto's comment is probably the best answer in the end