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College Staff Taking Classes and Doing Research
I presently work in a facilities-type role at a small Liberal Arts college.
One of the benefits of working at the college is the ability to take two classes per academic-year (not including summer or winter terms).
I have a BS in Economics from a larger university as well as a pretty broad quantitative background and I'm interested in taking classes in mathematics, statistics, and computer science (they have an MSCS program here).
What I'm wondering is this:
How likely would it be for me to become involved in research projects?
Would it be odd for a staff member taking a few classes to ask about doing research with a faculty member?
I'm hoping to pad my resume a bit for acceptance into a PhD or MS in Applied Math program down the line; but, I'm wondering if it's worth getting my hopes up about doing research even though I'm just a staff member taking classes.

This is happening currently in my university. It is a small tech school in midwest united states. We have a staff member in the mechanical engineering department who is pursuing a PhD in humanities with "advisers" in both humanities and mechanical engineering since she is working on an area of "technical communications". I have spoken with her and she does say that getting a PhD would definitely do more than just "pad" her resume/profile! I think in your case, given a similar situation, it would be a good idea to get some research/collaboration to boost your profile!

Well, after I the PhD hopefully a resume wouldn't matter so much (I'd much rather have a stellar CV with loads of research projects/papers); however, getting into a funded program is going to mean having something a little unique given that I'm a pretty unconventional student (I'm 30 y/o with a background in Army Human Intelligence--so, even though I'm older, I don't really have "work experience" in a quantitative setting, so to speak (though I did do data munging at a large market research firm post-undergrad, it was only for a year).

Well, your request would certainly be unusual for most faculty members, but that also doesn't mean it wouldn't be accepted!
The main challenge would be if you were looking to be paid for the work. Under such circumstances, it might be much more challenging to get involved with projects, because the funding mechanisms (such as NSF REU grants, which fund many undergraduate research projects) would not be available to fund you (since you're not an undergraduate student!).
However, if you're just looking to do it for the research experience, I think the biggest obstacle would be convincing a potential advisor that you're serious. I would recommend then that you make an in-person appointment, rather than trying to set something like this up via email.

Good answer. It will probably be easier to convince them you are serious once you have taken a couple of classes and done well. The fact that you have a degree in  a somewhat related field should help too. Best of luck!

Great answer! Exactly what I was looking for.
And, yes, I am just looking for the research experience and not any financial compensation. I'm looking to take a class in the fall; so, I will make sure that I research the class/professor to make sure it fits my background and research goals.
Thanks for the answer!


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How can I find out which universities allow a sandwich (stapler) PhD thesis?
Following on from What is a "Sandwich thesis"? , is there an easy way to find out which departments at which universities will allow a sandwich thesis (aka a stapler thesis, portfolio thesis, three-paper thesis, thesis by portfolio of publications, thesis by publication, article thesis or compilation thesis)?
That is to say, universities that explicitly allow PhDs theses that consist of a collection of published or in-press articles, possibly topped and tailed by an introduction and summary? It is, to my knowledge, quite rare in the UK - does it perhaps tend to be a country-specific thing?
I accept that it will depend on the supervisor's approval too, but that's a secondary issue: the supervisor can't allow a stapler thesis if the university/department does not. My question is about identifying eligible departments.

Of course you don't need to explain if you don't want, but I'm curious why you're asking.  I think it's a bit unusual to actively seek out an institution with the plan of doing a "sandwich thesis" (or indeed, with any so specific ideas about the ultimate nature of a thesis).

The department where you are going to submit the thesis probably has a document of PhD/thesis regulations that specify if such a thesis is allowed. For example, my department's regulations have the following statement:

[...] Scientific publications may form a part of a doctoral thesis. If the doctoral thesis consists of several scientific papers, a presentation of the guidelines of the papers submitted has to be added in an appropriate extent. [...]

i.e. a sandwich thesis is possible here. So you should find out if your favored departments have similar regulations and have a look in there.

It's essentially impossible to know if you'll be able to do a stapler thesis or not, because the decision also lies with the thesis supervisor, who may not allow you to do that, even if it is allowed by the rules of your university or department. I was co-advised, and one thought a stapler thesis was an inherently logical way to write the thesis, while the other thought it was a really bad way to write a thesis, and didn't allow his students to do it.

This is true:  I've examined a sandwich dissertation as an internal examiner at my own institution, then I found out a different student had been denied this option because his supervisor didn't believe our university allowed it.

I don't think there is an easy way to determine this. I don't think it is often set out in the University regulations. For example, where I did my PhD different departments would have different approaches and within each department different supervisors would have different approaches (that fits to what the department 'allows'). Moreover, by 'approach', I do not mean anything written down. Rather, there were/are unwritten, sometimes spoken, conventions.
You could infer these by looking at what theses have been written at the university, in each department under specific supervisors. N.b., if you have more than one supervisor, the power-relation may determine who's conventions are followed.
All of this is a lot of work. I would like to address what I imagine your original intention is - will I be made to do extra work that could be detrimental to my academic career (by reducing publications, for example)? If this is your motivation, perhaps a more effective tool is to simply see for each potential supervisor where their students ended up afterwards. You would not be able to infer what type of thesis must be written from this, but you would be able to get the bigger picture.

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What should a good theoretical physics PhD progress look like at the beginning of 3rd year?
Obviously I am asking this because I am worried!
I am a theoretical physics grad student at one of the top places in the US. The following is a brief history of my last 2 years and I would like to know of opinions and suggestions regarding the path ahead.

I did the most advanced courses (relevant to my interests) during my first year and worked on some project ideas through very high-profile external collaborations (but the projects didn't work out and I had to can the drafts) During my second year I tried working with some other profs but the projects were never really interesting.
[..though I have a (single author) paper on arxiv from my 2nd year work and may be I will get one more...]
Towards the end of second year I started meeting with a very brilliant scientist who will be joining my institute as a faculty in January 2014. With him the projects are very exciting - but interactions are difficult since he is still mostly not in campus.

Of course this unstable path happened since I had to join a grad school which didn't have people in my subject of interest. But over the last 2-3 months things have been looking up as this new person came in...

I would love to get it done in 5 years!

what about your phd advisor?

@user774025 As in?

"but the projects didn't work out and I had to can the drafts" — this sounds weird to me. It is not rare at all for a project/idea not to work ou the way you would like, but for it to fail so utterly that you cannot get any work published out of it, i.e. that there is nothing for the community to learn from it, is rather rare. That it happened multiple times might be an indicator that you threw the towel too early, or that you could be looking harder into how to extract something useful from your failed attempt. Helping you out with that would typically be the job of your advisor, because it is not the easiest part of the job...
Other than that, your account does not look particularly worrying: as others have noted, you have already built a good network of collaborations, have one publication, and advanced your course requirements... Sounds good to me!

I'd suggest this is more common than you might imagine in theoretical physics. I wouldn't call it failing utterly, but there is in general little patience for false starts. You can get such things published somewhere, but of course, you will be told that those publications (with IF < Phys.Rev.[subject letter]) don't "count."

Those projects very soon became way too difficult for me to carry on on my own.  There is only so far that a beginning student can possibly collaborate with big scientists over email. Whatever little I achieved through these collaborations is seemingly not of publishable standards.

I don't think you have much to worry about. I recently obtained my PhD in physics from one of the top universities in the country and then went on to my current position of postdoc at another of the country's top universities, and I didn't get my first publication until my 3rd year. Hell, I didn't even start research until early on in my 3rd year, so you really seem ahead of where I was at this point.
With regards to the comments on having to abandon the fist projects you worked on, that doesn't seem particularly worrisome either, especially as you get started in research. Your ability and speed with which you can do research will increase dramatically over the next couple years, and your ability to choose good problems will do so perhaps even more. Perhaps the reason your projects previously didn't pan out has to do with problem selection (I'm assuming the external collaborators were largely involved in the project selection here); PIs can sometimes be pretty poor judges of project quality, since some don't know the literature as well as they used to, but this varies from PI to PI.

+1: you're ready to graduate when you start having all the good ideas, and resent your advisor riding on your coattails ;)

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What are unique job titles in academia called?
Occasionally a university gives a famous professor a job title individually designed for that one person only.  Thus:

Donald Knuth is "Professor Emeritus of the Art of Computer Programming" at Stanford.
Gian-Carlo Rota was "Professor of Applied Mathematics and Philosophy" at M.I.T., although he had an appointment only in the mathematics department.

Is there a common noun referring to such custom-designed job titles for rare famous professors?
PS inspired by things written below: This is not the same as an endowed chair or a distinguished professorship.  Some universities use the titled of "Distinguished Professor" and have rules saying only a limited number of professors can have that title; some universitites call the appointees "University Professors"; M.I.T. calls them "Institute Professors" (Isadore Singer in the math department is an Institute Professor). But with Distinguished Professors there is some codified rule saying these can exist and setting forth certain criteria for granting such a title.  Similarly for endowed chairs.  Knuth's title was based on the name of an influential and famous three-volume work on computer programming that Knuth had written; it would be absurd to promulgate a rule saying who might be appointed to this position in the future and according to which criteria, since it's a title that can fit only one person.  Nor could it have been contemplated in Rota's case that others might some day have that title; it was awarded only because of the unique circumstances of Rota's life.

Often these are called "chairs" or endowed chairs.

Named Chairs, for positions named after a person.

Rota's position looks like a generic full professor with appointments in two departments: (1) applied mathematics and (2) philosophy.  I often sign my official correspondence "Professor of Computer Science", but that just means I'm a full professor with an appointment in the computer science department; it's not an actual job title.

I'm not sure Rota is a good example of the phenomenon you are interested in. It sounds like he simply had a joint appointment in two departments. I know of many professors whose title is "Professor of Mathematics and X" because they have a joint appointment in math and X (usually a science or engineering discipline like CS, statistics, physics etc.). I wouldn't call this a "custom-designed" job title, but please clarify if you meant to include all such cases, which are quite common.

@StrongBad : I don't think what I'm referring to is the same as an endowed chair, although the incumbent may also have an endowed chair.

@DanRomik : You're mistaken: Rota had an appointment only in the math department, but the Corporation gave him that title.

@JeffE : You're mistaken.  I've revised my posting to clarify this.

@MichaelHardy That's unclear. [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Rota.html](Rota's MacTutor biography) says: Rota was given the title Professor of Applied Mathematics at MIT but in 1972 his title was changed to Professor of Applied Mathematics and Philosophy. His New York Times obituary says: At M.I.T., Dr. Rota was the only professor of applied mathematics and philosophy, a dual position to which he was appointed in 1974. (1/2)

Neither of these sources state explicitly that his title was honorary, and the Times obit suggests he actually had a dual appointment.  What's your source? On the other hand, we was also the "Norbert Wiener Professor of Mathematics", which is clearly an honorary title. (2/2)

Rota's philosophy professorship was not honorary, but he was not considered a faculty member in MIT's Department of Linguistics and Philosophy either.

This is was what Rota himself told me about his appointment in philosophy:  His philosophy professorship was not honorary, but he was not considered a faculty member in MIT's Department of Linguistics and Philosophy either.  He taught classes in both mathematics and philosophy (his specialty in philosophy being Husserlian phenomenology), but he was not listed among the linguistics and philosophy faculty.  I asked him about this discrepancy, and he told me that the philosophy appointment was a something special he had been given, and he was independent of the regular philosophy department

The thing the in the New York Times obituary was cribbed from what I wrote in Rota's obituary in the MIT newspaper The Tech:  http://tech.mit.edu/V119/N21/21rota.21n.html  (The first draft had a more detailed statement about his joint appointment, but we cut it because it hardly seemed relevant.)

This is not about named or endowed chairs.  Those are things often created before it is known who the incumbents will be.  The question is about titles created just for one professor, based on what that professor individually has done.  With an endowed chair the appointment follows a rule rather than making a singular exception.

@MichaelHardy evidently the positions you are referring to are very rare indeed and seem to arise only in response to a whimsical or quirky wish on the part of a famous scientist. Considering this, do you have any special reason to expect that there is a noun associated with such positions?

@DanRomik : I don't know how rare they are.  As for a wish on the part of the appointee, I wonder if the wish came from those who appointed someone? It's not hard to imagine some authority granting the title of emeritus to Donald Knuth and deciding to give him a special custom-designed title.  But certainly I would not expect to see such a thing at most universities. ${}\qquad{}$

Emeritus just means he is retired.

@DanRomik : QUOTE In some cases the term is conferred automatically upon all persons who retire at a given rank, but in others it remains a mark of distinguished service, awarded to only a few on retirement. END QUOTE

It seems that at Stanford it is conferred automatically upon retirement.

In the United States, these types of "one-off" titles are typically given as a stage of promotion beyond full professorship.  The typical generic name would be "chaired professor," "distinguished professor," or "titled professor."  This is a rank that many faculty never reach, and typically the highest rank that a professor can achieve in the university as a professor---any further "promotion" is actually a change of position into management, e.g., dean, provost, president.
Such positions often come with a set of funds dedicated to support them, giving the faculty promoted to the position additional freedom of operation.  Often the exact title is set by the person or organization that endows support for the position.  For example, my thesis advisor is the "Panasonic Professor of Electrical Engineering" at MIT, meaning that his particular "one-off" position was endowed by the Panasonic corporation.  Such ties, however, typically mean little besides the name.

But "chaired professor" and "distinguished professor" are not the same thing.  Some universities have a position called "Distinguished Professor", and that is something that exists under codified rules, sometimes specifying that only a small number of professors can hold that title at any time.  At some universities the title of "University Professor" is used.  At M.I.T., the title is "Institute Professor", and I think only 12 professors can have that title at any time.  Isadore Singer in the math department is one of those. That is not an uncodified title created for just one professor.

It's more than just the name, usually endowed chairs come with endowed chair funds for additional salary or research.  These can be quite considerable -- tens of thousands to low six digits more.

so your thesis advisor was Gerald Jay Sussman?

@darethas Indeed, as can be readily confirmed by anybody who feels like looking up my thesis. :-)

authors: محمود السليمان

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"Recognition" of scholarly journals
Are there some academic fields in which there is such a thing as official recognition of scholarly journals, so that speaking of a journal as being "recognized" or "unrecognized" would be generally understood by those in the field without any accompanying explanation?
I encountered someone on the internet saying that the unrecognized status of a certain journal in health sciences was of some consequence. But he got bored and went away when I posed this question.
Note: "Anonymous mathematician" wrote in a comment "I see this usage as being like the term 'recognized expert' (which is talking about reputation rather than certification)." But although the term "recognized" is used in that way, "unrecognized" in general usage often refers to something official or precisely defined. "Ian_Fin" wrote in a comment below: "Recognised by who?".  But that of course was a substantial part of the question.

What do you mean by recognition? Beyond the obvious, what would be the difference between a recognised and an unrecognised journal? Recognised by who? I flagged this question as unclear.

It's not clear to me that the person on the internet was talking about official recognition.  For comparison, there's certainly no notion of official recognition of mathematics journals, but if someone referred to a certain journal as being recognized or unrecognized, I think it would be generally understood and agreed upon.  I see this usage as being like the term "recognized expert" (which is talking about reputation rather than certification).

@AnonymousMathematician : It seems the word "recognized" is often used in the way you describe, but "unrecognized" usually means something official, or the absence of something official.

@Ian_Fin : That's what I was asking!

@MichaelHardy: That's a good point.

I'll take New England Journal of Medicine as an example. Is it recognized? I think most people would agree that it is recognized in medicine. Is it officially recognized? Then people would argue what do you mean by "official". This question is unclear to me in the sense that what "official" is. Would you please consider rephrasing the question so that it is clear?

Judging by your "clarification", this question seems to be more about the semantics of the word  "recognized" than anything having to do with academic journals.

@ff524 : I don't think so. For example, in the fields of chemistry and astronomy, there are professional bodies that decree what "correct" technical terminology is. This is somewhat like that.

It appears that what you mean to ask is something like: "Are there academic fields in which some professional body maintains a list of 'recognized' journals, such that work in journals not on that list tends to be discounted by scholars in the field?"  Is that about right?

@MarkMeckes : Yes.


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How to deal with students who are among the more ignorant but think the know everything because they worked hard and got straight "A"s in high school
How should instructors deal with the fact that the students who know the least are precisely the ones who think they know everything?
NOTE: This question is not and never was intended to be primarily about mathematics instruction, but was intended to be equally applicable to all subjects to which it can be applied (which probably means all subjects).  It has been edited by seemingly many people.  I hope I've now expunged the most offensive edits from it.  The examples below are about mathematics for the obvious reason. END OF SPECIAL NOTE
Someone takes high-school math courses in which all that is required of them is that they learn algorithms for solving assigned problems, and they think that learning those is what learning math consists of (in other words, they learned no math) and since they always worked hard and got straight "A+"s, they think they're really good at math. Then they say they're entitled to take a course requiring only learning technical skills and algorithms and not requiring them to understand anything, and they think it's outrageous that an instructor would think there's something more that should be required of them. You can't get more ignorant of mathematics than to think that learning procedures to follow mechanically in solving assigned problems is what learning mathematics consists of (or at least you probably can't get more ignorant than that and still get admitted to a university), nor more arrogant than to think that an instructor needs instruction from people who think that.
High-school courses in which students effectively learn (without being told so) that learning mathematics consists of learning procedures to apply mechanically to solve assigned problems are the result of official decrees that everybody must learn mathematics. So ignorance of mathematics results from decrees intended to have the opposite effect.
In one case a student wrote on a test something like "Are you kidding? u-substitution? We shouldn't see that until next semester!" An entirely inexperienced person would have laughed out loud at a student mistakenly thinking under the circumstances that they were being asked to use the technique informally called "u-substitution", and moreover the class had been told in advance that that particular problem would be there. And sometimes they're not angry (as in the example in my previous comment) but they neglect a topic of which they are completely ignorant because they think they already know everything about it.

So is the question "How to deal with the fact that..." or "How to deal with the students who..."? I voted to reopen anyway...

There is an entire site on the SE network dedicated to math educators. I think this question is much more relevant there.

Set them tasks from the Math Olympics. As extras. Give brownie points for solving them. That should show the good ones what they need to stretch towards, and the others will find themselves behind and feel the limits of their "competence".

I think this question has nine down-votes and nine up-votes so far.  The large number of down-votes without attempts to say what anyone objects to about the question makes me suspicious.  Will admitting to suspicions incite more down-votes?

I think it's a tough question because it's right on that line of how to handle difficult students without hating on them.  I'm not saying that's what you're saying, but I can see how it could be read that way.  Giving them their first bad grades will go a long way towards straightening things out.

I downvoted this question originally because it was extremely ambiguous - it didn't say what actual student behavior you were trying to fix.  "Dealing with the arrogance of ignorance" can mean a lot of different things. I tried to fix the title to better reflect your specific question, hopefully that will help with the votes. (If you keep the edit I'll retract my own downvote..)

Someone edited this to say "higher-level" mathematics" and that's grossly wrong and I deleted it.  The sort of conceptual thinking I had in mind can be done just as much with elementary-school arithmetic as with "higher-level" subjects.  It isn't often done that way because in elementary school the powers-that-be say everybody must learn mathematics whether they want to or not, not because that kind of thinking doesn't go with the subject at that level.

I downvoted the question for the same reason I upvoted eykanal's comment. There is an entire Stack Exchange for math educators, which is for all levels, but you asked it on Academia SE, which is explicitly for graduate and higher-level education. So you're effectively off-topic here with what would be perfectly on-topic there.

@Nij : This question was never intended to be primarily about mathematics instruction, but rather about something that could happen in teaching any subject.

I think this is an important issue, and wrestling with it has informed a lot of what I do as a community college lecturer in mathematics. Helping students make the transition from the BS they get in many K-12 programs, and getting to share real math with them for the first time, is a great challenge and responsibility.
What gets me a surprising amount of traction is to address this explicitly, as the first thing on my syllabus. Top goal: "Read and write math properly with variables." I verbally quiz them on this on day two. I touch back on it almost every day. I explicate how I'll be grading for this on tests, and show grading examples from old tests. Why? The professional writing (a) provides a shared language, (b) allows them to read any math book, (c) serves as an explanation to other students and colleagues, and (d) makes it easy to find and fix errors and disputes.
Example interaction from yesterday (day 9 of the fall semester): One student has garbled the writing of a polynomial multiplication; I point this out, and she does the "But I got the right answer" bit. I ask, "But what's the number one goal for the course?". She says, "I don't know" (which even she can tell is not a good response), and almost all the rest of the class calls out, "Reading and writing math properly".
So this makes the expectation very clear, and by talking about it as item #1, I get the majority of the class on my side, and the community standard (peer pressure) works greatly in my favor. There aren't many silver bullets in teaching, but I'm delighted at how effectively this one works for me.
(P.S.: While the above is math-specific, I think the basic idea of setting a reading/writing/justifying "top goal" can work in many classes. E.g., in my C++ programming course I start with a quote from Bjarne Stroustrup, "Design and programming are human activities; forget that and all is lost", and then likewise emphasize making one's code readable to other programmers via a common style. As Ken Bain writes in What the Best College Teachers Do, "Finally, the best educators often teach students how to read the materials..." [Ch. 4]).

Telling them the right bottom-line answer in every case at the outset might help deal with those who think that getting that is the whole point.

@MichaelHardy: I do a little bit of that; I hand out practice tests that are presented that way.

Some students can be extremely proud (or arrogant), especially if they have been straight A students their whole lives. You may be better off explaining to them that there is a huge gap between the math they have learned in K-12 and the point where college starts off. Effectively suggesting that there are things they need to learn in addition to what they already know instead of implying that they didn't learn anything.

Those who think they know everything "know" that any such messages are intended for their classmates and not for them.

There shouldn't be such a huge gap, and probably isn't among students are are good at the subject.

"Effectively suggesting that there are things they need to learn in addition to what they already know instead of implying that they didn't learn anything." A problem with this is that some students, and some professors, try to be deliberately stupid in some circumstances because they know that in some circumstances that is a good strategy for getting ahead in the system, as opposed to actually learning. The kind who think they know everything are usually the kind who do that.

You're going to not come over as very likable if you're the one who always corrects the same student. But you can put this task onto other students. For example, if problem student A (again) provides his or her opinion on a topic, ask the rest of the class what they think. The other students will do your task in correcting A. Of course, you ought to also ask the class about opinions brought forward by others, which is generally good class design anyway.

What is typical is that several students are like this and sometimes it's entirely private.  In one case a student wrote on a test something like "Are you kidding?  u-substitution? We shouldn't see that until next semester!"  An entirely inexperienced person would have laughed out loud at a student mistakenly thinking under the circumstances that they were being asked to use the technique informally called "u-substitution", and moreover the class had been told in advance that that particular problem would be there.

. . . . and sometimes they're not angry (as in the example in my previous comment) but they neglect a topic of which they are completely ignorant because they think they already know everything about it.

I don't seem to encounter these kinds of students, so don't quite know what to suggest.

@MichaelHardy I don't understand the u-substitution comment - Is this a problem that explicitly asks a student to use substitution to integrate something when it was also explicitly mentioned that problems requiring the use of that technique would not be on the test? Or is it a problem that is "usually" solved with substitution that can also be solved with a different method and the student just assumed that he/she was supposed to use substitution?

@KevinL : No integrals were involved.  Nor derivatives.


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How can women improve their chances to get postdoc positions in computer science?
I am planning to apply for postdoc positions in computer science (CS) departments, preferably in the US or Europe. I have searched several computer science departments/research groups at different universities to see the current projects and Postdoc researchers. I saw that most current postdocs are men. So, the following questions came into my mind:

Is it because either women did not apply for the position, or were the women's applications unsatisfactory to get the position?
Is it true that women do not have much interest and hence success in CS than men? or lets say are men in general better in CS than women?
Although it is unethical, is it true to assume that the CS members have tendency to hire men more than women in reality?
If answer to Q3 is "yes," what would be the most effective motivations to encourage
the hiring of women postdocs in CS?
For women who have recently finished their PhD's, is it better to apply for academic research fellows or industry research positions?

I think the best one to answer this question is @JeffE since he is "the chair of the faculty recruiting committee in a top-5 US CS department".

(With rare exceptions, CS departments in the US don't hire postdocs; individual faculty do that.  But I'll try to answer anyway.)

A slideshow about whether CS being heavily male-dominated is due to innate differences in ability: http://www.slideshare.net/terriko/how-does-biology-explain-the-low-numbers-of-women-in-cs-hint-it-doesnt?

I don't think there is any discrimination - our CS dep. in Canada is full with female post-docs. I think however that - in general - there are less female CS students compared to male students. In a typical CS undergrad class in my school, 10% of students are female students - on average.

I can only answer for Europe, but I assume JeffE is going to provide high-quality info for the US anyway.

I saw the most of current postdocs are men.

With some exceptions, this is unfortunately very true across Europe. And not only post-docs. It gets worse the higher "up" you go in hierarchy.

1- Is it because either the women did not apply for postdoc or women's applications couldn't make the CS community or individual faculty members satisfied?

In Vienna, where I did my PhD, we simply received basically no female applications. It was not a question of my professor not being satisfied with the female candidates - in the majority of cases, there simply were none.

2- Is it true that women do not have much interest and hence success in CS than men? or lets say are men -in general- better in CS than women?

I am sure that women are able to do CS just fine. We just "lose" them some time during school. How this happens is a question of reasonably heated debate (gender studies etc.), and I do not feel qualified to answer it competently.

3- Although it is not ethically feasible, is it true to assume that the CS members have tendency to hire men more than women in reality?

This will surely be true for some individuals, but by and large the official university policy in most places is that "equally qualified" female candidates should be hired over male ones, and this actually seems to be the case. In general, as most universities are pretty desperate to increase their quota of females in higher positions, being a top female researcher will actually make it easier for you to get a strong postdoc or junior faculty position in Europe. Edit: I should make clear that the last sentence is based on personal opinion and anecdotal evidence more than anything else.

5- For the women who newly finished PhD, is better to apply for academic research fellows or industry research positions?

Follow your heart. I don't feel gender should play into this decision. Anyway, in Europe there are preciously little industry research positions, so for the most part it's either academic research or industrial practice over here.

Is it due to lack of applications or lack of qualifications?

I am sure it is mostly due to the lack of applications due to the extremely small number of women studying computer science. Listen to episode 54 of the stack overflow podcast where they discuss how few applications they receive from women. If you consider women are a very small minority of people who have CS bachelors degrees (qualified for SO position) then we can assume that only a tiny percentage of those will continue studying for a PhD.

Is it true that women aren't as interested in CS? Or are they not as good at it?

It is obvious it is the former, women are not as drawn to the profession. Although they are as good as men at CS, if not better. There are societal pressures and influences that may subconsciously guide women to work in a profession that is considered more feminine (humanities, nursing and teaching for example). In this way women are more attracted to other areas because of social influence and simultaneously pushed away from CS. I feel that most of the time these are not conscious decisions. However it may be a conscious decision but women don't like explicitly stating social pressure as the reason for their career choice.
There is also the case where women would like to work in the profession but are repelled by the idea of working alongside mostly men as they feel they won't fit in with the group. They may also feel that they would be discriminated against in the hiring process and career progression. There are many reasons why women are not as interested in CS but not being as good as men is not one of those reasons.

Do some members of the CS community favour men over women?

Some, but only a small minority of people favour men over women. In fact many organisations encourage the hiring of women.

Should a woman apply for an academic institution or for an industry position?

This is up to the specific person and you cannot simply generalise by gender in this situation.

I've worked alongside female computer scientists – programmers, analysts, testers, students – in both academia and the workplace. They weren't inferior in any way, and many of them were damn good at it. If the numbers are relatively low, though, it's hard to pinpoint why that might be. I tend to think (or at least hope) it's more due to stronger interests in other areas than because social pressures pushing them away. Shame on anyone who would either squash the dream of an interested young woman or be skeptical about ability based on gender bias.

@J.R. My point about social influence was not so much "women can't do CS because of X". Rather I was describing the more subtle and subconscious social influences that over time push people in certain directions and which explain why women have stronger interests in other areas. For example they might not be aware that they are interested in teaching or nursing because society prescribes these as feminine jobs. There is a push and pull effect. Women are attracted to those jobs and men aren't. Vice versa for CS.

"In this way women are more attracted to other areas because of social influence and simultaneously pushed away from CS" this seems like something that would need a reference.

Something to consider is the atmosphere at a particular institution. Where I attend, about 20% of our CS staff are female. That is, unfortunately, quite high for a CS department. But the problem is not unique to Computer Science. This disproportion exists across many of the sciences. Try to find an institute where the number of women---both faculty and students---is high. That department will be one that is already proactively hiring females. If the tables were turned, I would be more comfortable in that setting, anyway, but that may be my personality.


text:
I have been betrayed and isolated by my advisor and I am mentally drained. What should I do now?
I'm in the middle of a complicated situation, and I'm wondering whether this is commonplace in academia.
Long story short: I'm an international student, and I recently completed my master's degree in CS. I had been working with one adviser (Prof A), I completed my course work in December, but since Prof A couldn't find worthy candidates to fill my place, Prof A told me that if I assist her with her research projects for one more semester, she will help me find a job. Fast forward two months, she told me in a meeting that she tried to help but she can't and that I should look for a job on my own. I recently asked if I could pursue a PhD in her lab. She said no, as she has no funding. I've successfully applied to a different lab (Prof B), only to find out that all professors are provided funding for first-year graduate students. Why would she lie about this? Is this normal?
The situation has since developed that I've been able to play my acceptance to Prof B's lab off of Prof A, and she was very happy to take me on now that I'm working on B's research; she clearly hopes to get research funding out of this new-found collaboration. This seems incredibly callous to me; she clearly has no interest in my situation, and simply wants more grant money. Is this normal behavior for academics? I was on the edge of being deported, and she clearly could not care less about my personal situation, only for her research money. Are all academics this callous?

Calm. Even if other people are behaving dishonestly and/or childishly, you should restrain yourself from responding in that fashion. Don't "engage" on those terms. Professors should take care for the scholastic welfare of students, not exploit them, certainly, and if they fail, then there is no dishonor in your taking your own welfare into your own hands. Don't apologize to someone who has proven their disinterest in your welfare.

Why not search other universities and institutions. US has many great universities and CS departments.

Should i tell my advisor sorry? — NO! You have nothing to aoplogize for.

By the way, the existence of departmental funding for first-year graduate students does not indicate that your advisor was lying about funding, since you need a lot more than one year of funding to complete a Ph.D.  It would be irresponsible for her to take on another student without a reliable plan for securing funding for the rest of their studies.

Still, don't allow yourself to be drawn into morally or ethically dubious situations. Don't allow yourself to participate in a professional "drama", even when it seems it's already happening. The "deportation" issue is irrelevant to scholarly merit, by the way, so don't confuse your visa issues with research issues or ethical issues... First try to imagine what you'd decide if visa issues didn't exist, as a baseline. Then see how far you must compromise yourself because of visa issues, and determine whether you are willing. No, people are not all jerks, but many are.

Your update is best asked as a second question. But no, advisors are not normally like this.  It sounds like you need a new advisor, if not a new department.

@JeffE i have posted it as another question. Here it is -http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17399/i-need-advice-on-how-i-should-handle-a-potential-awakward-situation-with-my-advi

@eykanal That edit completely changed the question. It makes more sense to delete (or revert) this question and post a new one rather than do this.

@trutheality - I disagree that it completely changed the question. It definitely edited it, but I just tried to summarize what was a lot of story into his basic questions. If others disagree they can definitely flag for deletion.

@eykanal the initial question was basically "this is my situation, what should I do now." What it is now, is "this was my situation, this is the action I took, this is the result, now please explain the psychology behind my advisor's actions."

@trutheality - Perhaps you missed the edit, that added a bunch of questions about whether this is common. There were also a few "what should I do now" questions which are too localized for this forum, and which I removed in the edit.

@eykanal I know, I saw the history. I think that instead of letting the edit go through as a moderator you should have educated Boneck35 on proper SE etiquette, e.g. not completely changing a question by editing it a day after it has been asked. When new information turns up and created new related questions, it's ok to post new questions and link to old ones for context. It's up to you and the other mods how to run things here, but it just looked like you encouraged that change, which is unusual to me.

@trutheality - We actually had this discussion before, and quite frankly, I forgot about that. It seems that the proper thing to do would have been to delete it. I should have remembered that discussion, my fault.

trutheality's answer is excellent. If prof A doesn't have funding beyond first year, she should have clearly stated so. If that is the case, I wouldn't necessarily call her later actions callous at all. Maybe she just genuinely wants to collaborate with a good student. I would withhold judgement until you can make the distinction between poor communication and manipulative action.

@Moriarty The advisor refuses PhD and when other senior professor offers to work with me on a PhD ,she suddenly wants to become co -adviser so that she could go to that client and pitch her own project to them. When that didn't work out ,and i asked her for PhD again, she said she doesn't has plans to take any new PhD students for next 2-3 years .There were 2 other people in my thesis committee defense.Both offered me a Phd but i could work with only one of them as the other Prof's projects need security clearance. Why would they offer me a PhD if i was just not good enough?

@Moriarty "Maybe she just genuinely wants to collaborate with a good student."Can you please clarify what you meant by this?

@Boncek35 perhaps there was merely a miscommunication about the whole funding issue, rather than Prof A acting maliciously. It's possible that she still wants to work with you in good faith (but just cannot support you financially). Basically, I'm saying that her intent may not be malicious.

So essentially, what you need is someone to take you on as a PhD. It looks like your current advisor just isn't interested in having you be her PhD student. This other professor is interested in having you as a PhD student, but you aren't interested in his research.
It sounds like neither of these is an option for doing a PhD. This means that you need to find someone else to be your advisor. Think about who else is in your department.
Other than that, your only choices are probably to find a job or leave the country.
(I'm not mentioning trying to apply to another university because I think admission season is almost over for most, but there might be some places still accepting applications.)

Post-edit things:

Why would she lie about this? Is this normal?

First of all, you don't know if she lied. You have no idea under what constraints she operates. Yes, you've been told first-years get funding, but a PhD is more than a year, so what is she supposed to do with you after that, if she really doesn't have funding? That would have been worse, spending a year working for her and then being deported, don't you think?
Secondly, if she did lie, she might have done it because she doesn't tell you what's really preventing her from taking you on. What if you're not as good a researcher as you think you are and she doesn't want you working on her project? What if she got funding from a grant that requires the participants to be citizens, and she's trying to get another student, who actually qualified for it, to join her? There are lots of possibilities.
Is it normal? Academics aren't special. People lie. I lie sometimes. I'm sure you lie sometimes. Lying is as normal in academia as it is anywhere else.
Honestly, the above answers the rest of your question too. You assume you know her situation and motivations when the fact is that you don't. You conclude that she's callous---maybe she is, maybe she isn't---again, sometimes you're going to run into a callous person, might even get (un)lucky and stumble upon a sociopath, that's just the risk you run when interacting with people. Nothing special about academia there either.

I can't get over the irony of someone named "trutheality" ("truth" + "reality") admitting to lying sometimes. Still, this is a good answer, so +1


text:
What are the potential pitfalls of using non-Greek/non-European characters as symbol in scientific writing?
So I am in a dilemma in that a recent publication literally has used up every (legible) character on this page. We have checked thoroughly and every single character is necessary and this many characters are unfortunately needed to avoid confusion (This is what happens when you try to combine several different theoretical areas together). We have also used up a bunch of symbols such as stars or dots. This question is not about how I should reduce the number of characters.
So right now I am thinking of using characters from outside of the European family, such as Japanese characters (Hiragana/Katagana) or Korean or Chinese. Of course, provided that these characters are simple enough. Some candidates include ひ, と, ㅈ, ㄹ, し, 十. Some of these characters are quite suitable and have simple pronunciations, although we are not thinking of pronouncing them in presentations.
But I have two concerns:

most conferences and journals have a "We only accept submission in English" rule: The submission must be written in English. Does this violate that policy?

does using these character violate some sort of implicit cultural norm in scientific writing and European/North American conferences so that we should avoid it?

Update:
Thanks for all the feedback. But most seem to focus on what other fonts I should try to use instead. Just as a clarification, in my area it is highly not uncommon for the papers to use many many symbols. Here is a mild recent example (not affiliated with these authors) and this one I saw that made me go "wow the notation is so nice!" (again, not affiliated). These seem to be conference submissions (around 10 pages). For full submission it can go up to 20-40 pages. So as you can imagine a symbol problem quickly arises.
I can't help if everything comes out like this. If you notice, it is easy find usage of thing such as $a^{i,j}_{k,l}$. k, and l are two agents from i and j graphs and a is just one possible variable out of many variables. So we are already making heavy use of super/subscripts. We use hats to denote estimated values so we are already there as well. We are also making use of mathcal, mathscr, mathbf, mathfrak, texttt, etc. to denote sets, graphs, matrices, special matrices and special conditions respectively. All extremely conventional usages.

I moved to chat a number of comments partially answering the question or suggesting alternatives. Please read this FAQ before posting another comment.

I am confused by the update. None of the two papers you link to seem to have an unusual amount of symbols. Iin fact I think most of my papers have many more, and I never risked to run out of them.

@DenisNardin 1. This is not a competition :), 2. I have mentioned already that these papers are "mild" and "nice" examples (look at the dates of these pre-prints: I grabbed them on the fly), and 3.  I am not lying about running out of symbols and made this question for fun.

Also I'm seriously looking at these comments and weighting them in. Also thinking about simply cutting out some symbols.

Use of non-Greek letters in the equations is not as uncommon as it seems. While the Greek letters are obviously the most popular, there are several commonly accepted symbols which are taken from the other alphabets, e.g.

Russian letter ш (sha) used in the number theory and Л (el) is used in some hyperbolic geometry,
Hebrew letter ℵ (aleph), ℶ (beth) and ℷ (gimel) denote aleph numbers, beth numbers and gimel function correspondingly,
Old english ð (eth) is used in context of derivatives,
Maltese ħ denote Planck constant,
Japanese よ (yo) is used in cathegory theory.

See this topic for more details. I myself have seen ℵ and ð being used in the papers and I am not working in any advances mathematics.
While there certainly are some drawbacks connected with readabilty of a paper written using excessive number of new symbols, there should not be any formal problems with the publisher as long as you can write all symbols in proper LaTeX script.
As the side note, there was a mistake (as pointed by @DanRomik) in this post with incorrect naming of the Hebrew letters, what quite well illustrates the danger of using new characters which are unfamiliar both to the autor and the readers.

Do you have sources for the representation of the Planck constant being of Maltese origin? He was German and according to Wikipedia, the variable name comes from a German word.

@WoJ not really. But as far as I know Maltese is the only language which derived this symbol from Latin before Dirac (there are similar letters in non-latin Slavic languages). So knowingly or not, when printing the papers existing Maltese symbol was probably used. Also, in 1900 this maltese letter was introduced into Int. Phonetic Alpabet, so maybe thats the way how it get into math. These are of course just guesses. Also, the information about Hilfsgrosse on wiki is about normal h (without bar) and comes only from an anecdote in book from 2003. Btw the symbol was proposed by Dirac, not Planck

I think ð and ∂ are slightly different symbols. (If anything, ∂ looks more like the Russian cursive form of д, д.) But there's also よ for the Yoneda embedding!

The letter you call gimel is a beth, and your beth is a gimel. A good illustration of the pitfalls of using unfamiliar character sets…

@Deusovi you're right, but ð is also used, see e.g. spin-weighted derivatives

@DanRomik good catch

About $\partial$: from my amateur comprehension of the history of this, I think it is not "eth", but just some form of cursive "d", used deliberately by various people in the 18th century. Also, I'd suspect that Dirac and others just put a slash through an "h" as a sort of modifier/accent, rather than consciously adopting a Maltese letter.

You need to distinguish between the optical representation of a character and how it is intended or interpreted. If a φ is used in mathematical literature, we pronounce it phi and this dates back to the tradition of using Greek letters because they were familiar to most readers at that time. If an ℏ is used in physical literature, we pronounce it h bar (not ħe) and this originates modifying the letter h used for a similar constant. I see no reason to assume that this is or was ever thought of as a Maltese character, even in the unlikely case that the typesetter used a Maltese glyph.

Really good answer. Anything that looks letter-like should work for variables. I remember in some calculus homework running out of usable letters (there aren't really all that many distinct letters in longhand with the number of things that have assigned meanings) and sticking an elvish letter in. If I knew the greek alphabet at the time I would have used that, but I didn't.

You’re doing it wrong, and are already violating a cultural norm that’s much more important than any norm having to do with a specific choice of character set.
That cultural norm is: write papers that can be understood by other people.
If you are using all the characters in the Latin and Greek alphabets, and dots and stars and a bunch of other symbols so that you literally ran out of symbols to use and still need more, I am willing to bet that your paper violates this norm in the worst possible way. If you add even more characters from other character sets most people in the West are unfamiliar with, you will only be digging your paper deeper and deeper into a black hole of incomprehensibility.
Aside from this, the answer to your two more specific questions are “probably” and “yes”, but I would classify those concerns as secondary compared to the one I mentioned above.
Bottom line: if Andrew Wiles was able to prove Fermat’s last theorem, Perelman proved the Poincaré conjecture, and countless other mathematicians and computer scientists successfully publish groundbreaking new results all the time with “only” the Latin and Greek alphabets and standard mathematical symbols at their disposal, I’m confident you too could expound your theory with those resources. So I suggest rethinking the approach behind your question and asking yourself why you need so many symbols when everyone else doesn’t.
Edit: another couple of observations about your suggestion:

The Unicode standard, widely accepted as the ultimate in standardization of text representations, defines what is a mathematical symbol, and has several dedicated blocks for those symbols (with certain standard symbols falling in other blocks for historical reasons, but still being classified as mathematical). Your idea would pretty clearly go against the spirit (if not the letter) of that standard.

Your idea would also go against the increasingly common idea of taking accessibility, and the needs of people using screen readers and other accessibility software, into account in writing and publishing. Admittedly this is also a problem with existing mathematical writing, but your idea would certainly make things even worse than they already are for (for example) blind readers.

Using symbols from outside the mathematical operator blocks is not a "violation" of the Unicode standard. (+ is not in any mathematical block, and the upright letters used for things like \sin are also not strictly mathematical - they're the same characters you type with every day!) Blocks are just the general way that the characters are organized, not any sort of prescription on how the characters are used.

A "violation of the Unicode standard" would be using, say, an invalid byte in a UTF-8 string, or a font that switches φ and ϕ. Unicode describes which characters are used, and notes that other characters are often used as well [see the bottom of page 5, which explicitly gives の]. Unicode does not set any standards for how you write, only for how that writing should be encoded.

https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode13.0.0/UnicodeStandard-13.0.pdf Page 44: "The normative status of blocks should not, however, be taken as indicating that they define significant sets of characters. For the most part, the blocks serve only as ranges to divide up the code charts and do not necessarily imply anything else about the types of characters found in the block. Block identity cannot be taken as a reliable guide to the source, use, or properties of characters, for example, and it cannot be reliably used alone to process characters."

@Deusovi edited to soften my violation claim a bit. Thanks for the feedback.

It says "do not use combining marks" for MathML, a particular markup language. And again, this is about how you should encode your writing. Unicode does not make any sort of guidelines for how you should write text or notate things in general -- only for how that writing should be encoded into a sequence of codepoints. I agree that using other characters would be a violation of a social norm, but it's not a norm related in any way to Unicode.

Unicode does not standardize mathematical writing any more than it does nonmathematical writing: when, say, new Chinese/Japanese characters are created, it expands to be able to encode them, rather than prohibiting them. The standard is for how you should encode writing, not for what you're allowed to write in the first place.

@Deusovi fair enough. I softened my claim as I said, but still think Unicode’s designation of specific characters as mathematical is relevant for OP’s question. Saying the norm is “not related to any way to Unicode” is misleading IMO.

As a software engineer, I find the reference to Unicode laughable. The whole point of the Unicode standardization process is that it follows common usage. It does not define common usage. If a significant number of people have ever used a given character for serious purposes (i.e. not something like Klingon or Elvish script), and the Unicode consortium is aware of that fact, then they will generally encode that character. They do not go around telling people which characters to use.

@Kevin they don’t tell people which characters to use, but they assign derived properties to characters that affect how they are processed by typesetting algorithms (linebreaking, bidirectional text, kerning etc), and one of those derived properties is math, which applies only to characters traditionally used in math notation. If OP asked about writing Latin characters from right to left, would you say that it was irrelevant to point to Unicode’s classification that those characters belong in left to right text? Similarly here. Anyway, I stand by what I said, but thanks for your opinion.

@Kevin and Dan: I think you can meet in the middle: If something is not in the Unicode standard, it is at the very least pretty exotic. While the standard doesn’t tell you what characters you should use, it reflects what characters are used and thus should be used if you want to adhere to general usage. Compare to dictionaries: An English dictionary doesn’t define the English language or tell you not to use certain words, but it reflects the usage. Thus you should think twice before using a word not contained in a dictionary for a wide audience.

@Wrzlprmft: Eh, I wouldn't even go that far. Unicode has a lot of legacy crap in it that can't be deleted or fixed because of the Unicode stability policy (which forbids modifying, re-categorizing, or removing existing characters once they have been added to the standard). For example, Unicode has all the funny script-looking Latin characters, which probably makes you think that those are "real" mathematical symbols - but in fact, they're deprecated and only in there for backwards compatibility, since you should just use a font for that effect.

@Kevin: Unicode has a lot of legacy crap in it that can't be deleted or fixed – But that affects the inverse claim (if something is in Unicode, it’s okay to use), which nobody made and is not relevant here.  — but in fact, they're deprecated and only in there for backwards compatibility, since you should just use a font for that effect – I cannot find any evidence for that. On the contrary, they appear to have just accepted more of them. Also doing this properly with a font would quite tedious.

@Wrzlprmft: Well, until recently that was the attitude I had been hearing from the Unicode people. Apparently they changed their minds. Regardless, the point is that Unicode is at best a seriously lagging indicator, and not at all a source of truth or set of best practices. You have to figure those out for yourselves, and then tell the Consortium about them, not the other way around.

Hint: variables/symbols don't have to be unique throughout the entire paper, they only have to be unique within their specific context.  I'm willing to bet that you can drastically reduce the number of variables used by splitting the content into smaller chunks and re-using symbols for the intermediate steps within each chunk. If you need that many symbols at a global scope, you might be doing too much in one paper.

In mathematical writing, it is common to use variants like these:

and possibly others

Don't forget accents, so easily hundreds of options.

Good point, although I must admit that I find script and fraktur difficult to read at a glance.

"Difficult to read" ... but not more difficult than と, ㅈ, ㄹ, etc.

Fair enough. I should clarifying that I wasn't comparing with "と, ㅈ, ㄹ, etc.", just making a remark about my own experience.

Readers may also be interested in https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/q/4427/376 and https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/q/4437/376. @GEdgar, I see in fact that you provided an answer to the latter question. Full disclosure: both questions were asked by me.

Luckily capital greek letters are rarely used .... :-)

Script vs calligraphic may not be so clear with some fonts, and getting both may take a bit of effort anyway

@lalala, I do like a capital upsilon! :)

If you really run out of symbols, I would try a different path.
In software development, people name everything by just using ASCII characters: They use words instead of single letters.
I know that in mathematics, you usually don't do that. But on the other hand, calling the cost variable cost instead of c will not make the paper unreadable.

In fact I’d argue that software is more readable for precisely the reason that we use full words with actual meaning. I find mathematics hard to understand because I have to look up the meaning of symbols all the time.

The way mathematics is written established itself when people mostly wrote by hand. When you have little space on a blackboard and you don't want to spend ages writing everything down, you tend to use short symbols instead of words. Mathematics is often very condensed.

@Michael true, but there are other reasons why software is more readable. Programmers are incentivized by their industry to document their code and make it easy for other programmers to understand. They work in a more collaborative environment (often in large teams working on a project and needing to edit the same code base). Programmers and their industry also worked hard to come up with a set of good practices to facilitate good communication and collaboration. I guess you think more about such things when the difference between good and bad communication is many millions of dollars…

@Michael I don't disagree, however you shouldn't underestimate that maths often is harder to understand simply because it really is harder. A long mathematically formula will typically get even harder to understand if you make the variable names longer, even if they're more descriptive then, simply because of the further increased size. — What really helps for understandability is refactoring formulas into subexpressions, theorems into smaller lemmas, thereby making small variable scopes where it's quickly possible to look up the meaning.

If you use a variable such as cost in a paper, a way to clarify that this deviates from the standard mathematical notation would be to use a different font for it. I would use the typewriter font, hinting at software development being a major provenance of such notation.

+1  Mathematics doesn't usually treat large problems in one sitting, so a terse formulation generally makes sense.  In OP's examples, however, the math is basically describing a complex algorithm.  Developers also started out writing terse code and, as you say, quickly learned that code which looks like math is impossible to maintain or read once the ecosystem grows into more variables that you can count on your fingers.  A descriptive pseudocode does seem like a much better language for OP's problem, or at least for some subset of their problem.

@Michael I strongly disagree. Try to write math with words with symbols instead of symbol some time. It will be unbearable and in no way more readable, it will make all formulas extremely long and hard to scan. If you write business software logic with databases or a web frontend, you use words but when inputting a mathematical equation with recognizable symbols it is just fine to use the symbols just fine. y = a*x**2 + b*x + c will be more readable than result = quadratic_coefficient * input**2 + linear_coefficient * input + constant_coefficient.

@VladimirF Yes, when it's something trivial like a quadratic, of course that's true.  But when it's four pages of terse mathematics describing a single algorithm that could be equally described in 100 lines of pseudocode, the argument changes somewhat.  There are also options in between a and quadratic_coefficient, so making the comparison with extremes, again, is perhaps disingenuous.  Mathematics is a language evolved to represent functions and relations.  Programming languages have evolved to clearly express algorithms.  Both are poor when used in areas where the other specializes.

@J... No! It is the opposite! Only such a trivial equation can still be done in words, the really complex ones will become a complete hell when you try that! And the question is about a paper, not software and Michael was orguing for words instead of symbols in math, it was not me calling for disusing descriptive names in software. I was only illustrating that equations become a nightmare when written in words. And yes, even those that are implemented in a straightforward way in software, as it is often the case in math, physics and engineering.

Even with a symbol list, keeping track of so many different letters will be difficult for readers. It can be made easier by introducing order and hierarchy to the symbols.
The style will vary by field, but for example you could have:

Uppercase letters A, B, ... for main symbols that link together the whole work and appear in multiple sections.
Subscripted uppercase letters Ax, Bc, ... for symbols that are related (but not equal) to one of the main symbols.
Lowercase letters a, b, ... for local parameters, which can then be reused for different purposes in different sections.

That still leaves a lot of symbols available for other purposes. For readability, you should make use of the same symbols and conventions that other papers do, within reason.

How about subscripted letters where the subscript is a descriptive word. I'm thinking $\lambda_\textrm{min}$ and $\lambda_\textrm{max}$. I think this is a great way to make it clear the subscript is not an index.

@Clumsycat We are in fact already there. The two examples are currently being used to denote maximum and minimum eigenvalues. Again standard in the literature.

Apart from the other answers that a paper using so many symbols will be incomprehensible (I do entirely support these answers): many publishers use commercial custom fonts and their fonts may simply not contain characters for scripts other than latin and greek.
Even European scripts such as cyrillic cause problems. See what happened here, for example?  All of the text is in Times, yet the Russian abstract is in Computer Modern: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hm.2020.04.003

You should definitely use those characters. Academia needs to be less Eurocentric.

The primary goal of a paper is to be understood, not make a geopolitical statement. Papers used to be written in French and in German before they were mostly written in English. Cultural norms do vary over time. Still, papers should be understood, and I don't think many people would understand a paper containing every Latin and Greek symbols, and some Asian ones for good measure.

And to be thorough let's use every single symbol ever invented by every culture chosen randomly, you know, to commemorate world history.

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

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


text:
Are law review publications helpful for gaining acceptance into a PhD program?
I'm currently finishing up my J.D., and I plan on practicing law for at least a few years. However, I'm also considering returning to school to study CS. In the meantime, I plan on researching and attempting to publish at least a few articles - perhaps some related to cyber law.
Given the less rigorous nature of law review, how would an admission committee view these?
Also, does the prestige of the journal matter - i.e. Harvard Journal of Law & Technology vs. Michigan State Law Review?

First, I don't agree much with aeismail's assessment that review articles “may carry less weight overall than a traditional research article”. A good review article is very hard to write, because this requires a very high level of understanding of the existing research and literature, as well as strategic thinking to discuss what will be of importance in times to come. To me, this is actually very much harder for a PhD student to have than publishing a “regular” research article. I think most committees would agree.
Now, how will the committee recognized a good review article? Ideally, by reading it and being impressed at the clarity and level of the discussion it displays. In the real world? Probably by the name and prestige of the journal it was published in.
So, my advice is: publish good stuff, in good venues. It matters more that you get to publish things, than what exactly you publish, as long as it is good! (Yeah, that sounds trivial, but you asked for it!)

Reading and synthesizing literature is one thing; applying it to do something new is another.

I think the important part of this discussion is the distinction between what type of law review article is being published. Plenty of law review articles suggest new policy and procedure to alleviate existing legal problems. Is this not something new? I think these are the type that are difficult to write but also highly regarded (at least in legal academia).

@aeismail synthesizing literature is not a review, it's a bibliographic notice; review involves some critical thinking

The higher the quality the journal you can publish in, the better—but that's a truism.
On the other hand, I don't know how much weight an admissions committee would give to a law review publication, because these tend to be synthetic papers rather than creative papers: that is, a law review acts much like a literature review paper, instead of a paper where you've done original research and found an interesting result. Consequently, it's not fully reflective of what you would be doing as a researcher, and thus may carry less weight overall than a traditional research article.

Many law reviews actually do publish original research, (I'm more aware of those typically oriented to some pertinent social science research, but that may just be because of my field).


text:
How can I invite open comments or reviews of my published papers?
I would like to attract more discussion, comments or reviews of my papers and so would like to add the ability for comments or reviews to be made by the public in relation to my papers. Ideally I would like a comments section similar to those found in blogging software which allows comments to be moderated. I would like to provide this ability in an easy to maintain way but also maintain mediation control. I would rather not use blogging software.
What would be the best way of allowing open comments/reviews on my work? What are the pros and cons of allowing open, but moderated comments like this?

I agree with Charles Morisset.  You want to post something to the web and collected moderated comments, which is basically blogging.  There are a few stylistic differences (for example, blogs are often organized chronologically, which doesn't make sense for research), but it's nearly the same thing.

Current blogging software doesn't exactly fit the flow of comments for this purpose, as you have mentioned. I would be interested in how blogging software could be modified to better support this, e.g. google scholar or arxiv integration to save on blog maintenance.

Okay, this is totally not an answer to your specific question, but I think it is an interesting answer to the broader question of getting comments and feedback on your published papers…
Go to conferences, present your work (either at oral or poster presentations), and make sure you stick around and are welcoming enough so people will ask questions, give you feedback, engage in discussion about your methods and results, etc. I have received tons of insightful comments on my own work in conferences, and still find them an extraordinary tool to gather feedback on your published work.
Also, do not hesitate to engage with other researchers with research interests close to yours, and after you get to know them, ask them clearly what they think about it. I mean, if you discuss with top-notch people in the same area, they will have read your paper (unless it's really very recent); I have started very insightful conversations with lines like:

Hello, professor Smith, it's nice to meet you. Since the 2011 conference, when we last met, I saw your nice paper on X in Flagship journal of your field. It was really an improvement over existing methods. Actually, there was a question I wanted to ask: you may have seen that we published a different approach with the same goal last year in International journal of our field, and we are getting slightly different convergence properties. I haven't had yet the opportunity of asking you what you thought of our approach and the way it may prevent the issue of Y…

Just remember, that's not a conversation everyone is willing to have. So, if it looks like they are trying to bail out, help them get out easily! Manners, always :)

I agree that blogging would technically be the way to go.
However, realistically speaking, I don't think you are going to get many comments unless your papers are truly outstanding. See for example Terry Tao's blog -- one of the best-written and widely admired math blogs out there -- the number of comments is often in the single figures. Presumably that is an upper bound for what you should expect.
The best way to get comments, in my opinion, is to e-mail your paper to individually selected people and invite them to offer comments. Most people won't reply, but you might get a couple of interesting responses.

In fact, a number of scientific publishers are experimenting with online comments on their publications. Examples are the PLoS or BioMed Central. This is of course mostly suitable for online-only journals, and depending on your field they me be more or less reputable. I guess the publishers are also moderating comments on these articles. So a good approach on getting comments on your articles is publishing with a publisher that offers this functionality.
If you check on a few articles with comments enabled, you will quickly learn that the typical number of comments is: zero. I think it is just not that suitable for scientific communication, and the approaches mentioned in F'x's answer would be more useful to get into scientific debate about your paper.
Maybe in the future the scientific culture will change to have more public online interaction, but at the moment this possibility doesn't seem to draw much attention.

If the topic of your paper aligns with a StackExchange site, you could post questions related to your paper on that site.
For example if you you wrote a paper in a psychology journal you could post a question about it on cogsci.stackexchange.com . As a moderator and active user of cogsci.SE, I'd like to see academics posting questions about their papers on the site.
I imagine this would take some thought. You'd have to understand the norms of the site and you might want to post on meta if you felt that this format was a little different to usual questions. You'd also want to be upfront about your motivations.
I think the stackexchange format provides an excellent commenting, spam management, and quality sorting system, and there is often an active community around the topic. That said, you might need to encourage others not familiar with StackExchange to direct their comments to particular pages.
In the post, you'd want to provide a link to the full-text of the article.
You'd also need to think about how to frame a given question so that it is not too open ended.

I like this approach, I have found similar sentiments here: http://mendicantbug.com/2009/02/07/the-stackoverflow-of-academia/

Depending on the area, research questions tend to be too specialist for forums like SE. I have got much useful feedback from SE sites, but almost none on research-related questions.

@FaheemMitha Is your field covered by an existing stack exchange site?

@JeromyAnglim: Well, I've worked in different areas, but, yes, I've asked research related questions on SE sites, see for example my page on stats.sx. The three questions I asked there (all related to the same project) got a grand total of zero replies. The one reply that shows up there is actually from the cs.sx site.

I'm sure that there are some research areas where one can get useful feedback from such sites - for important mainstream pure math areas like algebraic geometry, one could get useful feedback from the people at mathoverflow, for example. However, I think in applied areas things can get quite balkanized. Often one is off working in one's own specialized area working on specialized problems with specialized tools, and there isn't that much commonality. By contrast, one can get an answer to a programming question in as little as 20 minutes on Stack Overflow.

@FaheemMitha From a cursory glance at your questions on Stats.SE they seem particularly huge and a little daunting to read. Perhaps that level of background is required ultimately to ask and answer the question. Alternatively, perhaps there is potential to compartmentalise your questions more so that they tackle smaller aspects of your topic. I think converting scientific questions into that which is suited to the StackExchange format is very much an evolving idea.

Perhaps also my answer here is somewhat aspirational, such that even if certain StackExchange sites are not there yet, that they may be there in the future.

@JeromyAnglim: Yes, I'm aware the questions are long, but I don't think it is possible to isolate a research project  into a few lines. If one could, it would not be research. Having said that, if the area is sufficiently mainstream, and one can expect one's reader to already know the necessary background (like on mathoverflow) then maybe it is possible.

Interesting article on open peer review describes a reviewing process which might incorporate a voting or 'karma' system to entice reviews. Wonder is there the possibility of extending the SO voting model for this purpose? (http://yann.lecun.com/ex/pamphlets/publishing-models.html)

I've seen researchers posting their papers on Researchgate, explicitly asking readers to submit questions or criticisms.
Resaerchgate aims to be a social networks for scientists. While posting your paper there may draw the attention of people who don't already follow your work, I'd see it as an additional channel to communicate with collegues, and not as a replacement for beeing present at conferences or similiar.
Disclaimer: I'm an engineer, not an active researcher, so the dynamics on researchgate might look different to me than to they would to you.

For questions on a given topic my experience is that the sites around here are much better both in terms of the infrastructure (graphics, formulae) and in terms of the answers. Also, depending on the local laws and the copyright transfer, authors may not be allowed to publish the accepted manuscript there even though it is fine to make it available on your personal web pages (applies e.g. Elsevier where AFAIK currently arXiv is the only big repository they allow). Also (if I understood correctly how that works), clicking on discussion below a paper will just open a general question.

as I said, an active researcher might have better input on researchgate ... thanks.

I recently asked a similar question here. Although I haven't received any answers, I came up with some possible answers myself.
I use a service named Academia, who describe them self this way:

Academia.edu is a platform for academics to share research papers. The
  company's mission is to accelerate the world's research

When you have uploaded your paper, you can then invite people from your network, or outside your network, to participate in a review and discussion of your paper. An example of how to do this, can be seen at this example.
Academia is also a sort of social network, which mean you can "follow" other researcher with same interest and then invite them to review your paper.
If you want to expand your reach further, you can see in the above example, that it can be shared on twitter. You are probably already familier with twitter and know how hashtags work.
If not, I will simply explain:
Lets say your research area is webdesign, then you add hashtags like #webdesign, #webdevelopment etc.
As above, I'm also an engineer and have only used it, as a part of my master, so it might not be as relevant for you?!