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Good multiple choice question for education
I'm new to academia SE and I'm not sure if this question fits here, but I think this is the best place I can ask. Please let me know if this question doesn't fit here and suggest me better place to ask.
Let's say that I'm a teacher and there is a student. We ASSUME that if a multiple choice question is given, then we can predict the probability for each choice that the student will choose. For example, if a question have 4 choices A, B, C, and D, then we can predict that the student will choose each answers with probabilities 40%, 30%, 20%, 10%. We will always assume that A is the correct answer. Then my claim is the following:

For education, it is better to give a problem with probabilities 50%, 50%, 0%, 0%, than 25%, 25%, 25%, 25%.

The intuition behind this claim is the following: if we give a question with same probabilities for each choices as 25%, then the student might randomly guess, and she may learn less from solving the question. However, when a student faces a problem with probabilities 50%, 50%, 0%, 0%, then she may choose between A and B. Here 0% means that she (almost) surely knows that C, D can't be an answer. If she did wrong (choose B instead of A), then she may learn more from it because she only need to see difference between A and B.
I want to find a suitable reference that justifies my claim, with some real experiments. I tried to search hard but I failed to find it. If anyone knows such reference (papers or whatever), please introduce it to me. Thanks in advance.

What do you mean by better? In my view, the probability of a student choosing a certain answer (how would you define this anyway?) matters less than what that choice tells us about the student. For example, you could have Q: Compute (4+2*8)^2, and answers A: 400 (correct), B: 2304 (Student added before multiplying), C: 272 (Student thought (a+b)^2 = a^2+b^2), D: 357 (there is no plausible path to this answer, student is either guessing or wildly confused).

@SolveIt I agree with you. Actually, the way I predict the probability uses some estimation of a student's understanding for a question, so I think that the expected probability contains some information about student's understanding for the question.

I don't know where you're going with this (in particular, the part about the test taker "may learn more from it" makes no sense to me; maybe you meant those who interpret the test results instead of the test taker?), but a more nuanced view in which the probabilities are a function of the test taker's overall performance on the test is a well known tool in psychometrics.

With conditional probabilities you can create any structure you want. E.g. make a question where P(choosing answer A | knowledge of facts 1, 2, and 3) is high, while P(choosing answer B| knowledge of facts 1, 2, but not 3) is high. Not only does a mistake tell them they are wrong but also in what aspect of the material. The limit of course is your creativity in thinking of these questions.

You could probably ask this as well on MathEducators. To be clear, I haven't found any academic study about it, but even if there was one, you should know in advance what you are expecting to achieve.
I interpret your answer as in: "Should multiple questions allow options to be eliminated with partial effort?"
The answer of course, is that it depends a lot. Think carefully about:

What kind of test are you preparing?
  Is this a regular exam for elementary school that accumulates points which eventually determine if students are approved for the next year?
  If so, and if questions are easy already, I'd go for the equal chance for each alternative.

Or are you preparing an admission exam?
In easy admission exams, every bit of knowledge should count, so that the guys who knows nearly nothing is ahead of the one who knows nothing.
In difficult/competitive admission exams, people who are to be admitted are limited in their score by their performance accuracy, not by their knowledge, and possibly by their speed. So these tests are designed to have very good students getting around 70% of the maximum score. I've known such tests to contain this kind of problem either to mitigate the effect of very difficult questions (you give an easy way for the student), or to give time to the ones who master the subject well enough to think how to approach the problem even if they know a standard (and time consuming) solution method.

What average score should students get?

Again, If you are expecting bad students to get good grades, maybe you shouldn't bother to make it even easier, but if you expect good students to have bad grades, then why not?

Are you evaluating effort or just results?

Maybe you are giving 3 absurd options and 1 reasonable 1. Maybe you are giving 4 reasonable options, but some of them can be eliminated with knowledge of the subject. The first case only rewards students for reading the answers, while the seconds can measure some level of knowledge on the subject. Makings options impossible to eliminate rewards the student for the effort of solving the question, this is well represented in calculation intensive questions. But if the question is simple and "you either know it or you don't" (think asking who painted the Mona Lisa), you can make eliminating options difficult.
So effortless question does not give much room for allowing options to be eliminated, but work intensive question do. IMHO.


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Is it cheating to give someone my old exam revision notes?
Last year I completed an exam at University and a friend is doing the same exam/class this year.
Would it be cheating  if I gave her my revision notes of the semester (written before I did the exam)? They don't have any exam-related answers, just summarized lecture notes.
I read that it is cheating if a student has an unfair advantage over other students.
I don't want to get her or myself in trouble.
Thank you.

No, it is not cheating.

It's also not cheating for them to go to the library and find a particularly well written textbook that no-one else had.
It's not cheating for them to hire a tutor.
It's not cheating to share your revision notes with other students before your exam.
It's not cheating to do a unit completely including exam, then repeat it in the next year to get a better mark (In fact, this is normal if you fail)

Most would say not even cheating (or facilitating) to tell them about the exam in your year.
E.g. along the lines of "I focused my study too much on the topology part of the unit, but there was only 1 topology question in the exam. But I don't know how it will be this year."
Some would even argue that its not cheating to share with a past student a copy of last years exam, with fully worked solutions. On the basis that the instructor is not going to use the same exam twice. This is a bit more dubious though.
At the end of the day, the purpose of the exam is to test how well they know the content.
So the context of an unfair advantage is one that lets them do well in the exam, without learning the content.
No one cares how they learned the content.
They might have gone to lectures, read the textbook, watched youtube lectures from other universities, read notes from a friend, or even have been working in the field for decades and just be attending the exam to get the paper to prove it.
No one is assessing an unfair advantage at learning as cheating.

"Some would even argue that its not cheating to share with a past student a copy of last years exam, with fully worked solutions. On the basis that the instructor is not going to use the same exam twice. This is a bit more dubious though." And in some universities, students publicly host a web service where people can upload scanned copies of exams, and nobody bats an eye. And still some professors keep using pretty much the same questions year after year. And still some students fail, because even with past exams, writing memorized answers in the exam without understanding isn't easy.

I don't have enough reputation here to leave comments, so I'll have to leave them as part of an answer, but I would note, from my own academic integrity research, that the answer isn't always clear cut.
On the face of it, passing notes to another student sounds fine.
In practice, it depends a lot on how the notes were compiled and any additional value added.
As an example, there are sites that exist which reward students for uploading their lecture notes. They often breach the copyright of the original author (think of all the work the lecturer/professor went in to compile that course). Or, they breach the copyright of the university (since many universities automatically own the copyright of teaching materials produced by someone employed by that university). That would often result in an academic penalty based on breaching academic misconduct regulations. Deliberate breach of copyright could also result in a case that is taken through the legal system.
Now, in practice neither of those are likely to happen, but there have been several recent cases of cheating in universities being progressed in the real world, for instance, students getting someone else to take their exam for them who have ended up with a prison term.
What if the notes are edited before being shared? Well, the same copyright issues still apply. There is a point where the editing is sufficient that the notes could be considered a new piece of work, but that is a long way away.
What if the notes are being shared for free between students? The same issues still apply. A lecturer is unlikely to be concerned if it's a one-off event with a good reason (a student was ill and couldn't attend, so you supply them with a copy of the lecture notes), but a systematic activity, like constructed revision notes, may be considered unacceptable.
What then might be a good way to proceed?
One thing you might want to do is contact the lecturer and offer the edited revision notes, to be made available to all students in the class as an additional resource. Many lecturers are very happy to supply additional material that they didn't have to compile themselves.
I agree with the other comments that you can use other existing sources to supplement your knowledge, such as textbooks, MOOCs, academic papers or YouTube videos. I'd always encourage my students to do this. If nothing else, it shows a wider interest.
Some students do hire outside support. Again, this is usually okay if it is just tutorial support, with the proviso that a lot of essay mills now operate in this space, with the intention of upselling towards their other cheating services. There are other obvious areas that aren't acceptable, but do happen, for instance hiring a teaching assistant who has privileged access to the course materials.
Reviewing previous test and examination papers also sounds perfectly acceptable. In the UK, those are all expected to be available to students. It still amazes me when I hear about universities where they're not available.
University staff themselves are expected to lead the academic integrity movement by example. That includes not allowing one student to have an unfair advantage over another student (consider the example where one group of students, such as a fraternity, has compiled a test bank which students outside that group don't have access to).
By the same token, there would be an expectation that coursework questions and exam questions were not reused. Using these could be said to be encouraging students to cheat. This would be uncommon in the UK, as the culture is to write original questions and have them externally checked, but if it did happen, I'd expect it to be a disciplinary issue.
Going back to the original question, if you do share your notes, I'd recommend checking that the content hasn't changed. I certainly update my materials every time I deliver a module, sometimes quite substantially where I think that I can improve the student experience (or when it's important to include an additional concept, which generally means trimming somewhere else). That's another good reason for running the notes past the lecturer to check that the information is still current.

Most of this answer seems fairly unrelated to the situation described in the question. The notes to be shared are revision notes written by the student doing the sharing.

Taking a set of lecture notes, summarising them, then providing them to another person, would be a breach of intellectual property. The longer answer provides more background to the reasoning, as well as related misconceptions, including those elsewhere in the answer to this question. Many lecturers/professors would not mind the breach. Some may encourage it. But it is a breach. Information isn't free, even though many Internet users believe it is.

That sounds extremely unlikely. There is no copyright on eg the proof of Kuratowski's theorem. It can be freely copied, summarised and distributed to and between students. I'm currently writing lecture notes on that, adapted from a book, and I expect my students will copy from the board and share between them without any copyright issues.

@Johanna, if you were to structure a class based around your own well-considered series of maths problems (i.e. a lecture), you would own the copyright. Most maths proofs are public domain, including the one you mentioned, but not all can be reproduced (for instance, the source code used for a computer assisted proof would be copyrighted - and some countries allow the whole algorithm to be patented). Likewise, original maths problems developed for the textbook would be copyrighted (academic provision would usually allow you some fair use of these in lectures, subject to citing the source).

@ThomasLancaster What you say is comparable to stealing textbooks from the store, or robbing a bank to finance your studies - it's illegal but it's not cheating on your exams.

@ThomasLancaster: "Taking a set of lecture notes, summarising them, then providing them to another person, would be a breach of intellectual property." - if that were true, university graduates would not be allowed to pass on their knowledge gained in classes to anyone else during their future work life. After all, any explanation of a concept can be seen as some kind of "summarisation" of the respective lecture notes.

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How to motivate and encourage scientist to give clarifications and respond to my questions about their work?
A year ago a small team (2-3 prominent scientists) from prominent academic and industrial collaboration published 120+ page long research preprint that could be very important contribution to the machine learning science. I have tried to decipher it and mostly I can grasp the main ideas and this article motivated me to read a lot of books and articles and learn a lot. But still - I can see quite clearly that the hardest part of this particle are not the advanced theory but just some obscure mathematical constructions that are not clearly defined or justified or worked out.
I have contacted authors several times before shyly. They were forthcoming but still I have many more questions left.
What is general practice about such communication between readers and authors? Is such communication the standard practice? Are authors eager to respond and make clarifications or maybe they have no motivation to spend time on such communication?
So - is there some way how I can encourage and motivate authors to respond to my questions?
I can imagine 2 factors that can contribute to their motivation:

This preprint is still not published and quite possibly that it is under the review (my guess is that is rejected as too obscure from the major publication venues). So - such communication can give hints for the improvement of the article. E.g. authors can give response to me and almost copy-paste some paragraphs of the answer in the improved version of the article;

I have honest intention to build my own research work on their article (series of articles). This can be even better motivation for them because the original article/preprint is pure theory but I have applications in mind.

From the other side, point 2 can be quite worthless in my case because I am making only the first steps in the research.

You say the authors have already been forthcoming in prior communications with you. But they are under no obligation to keep doing so and might be busy with whatever they are doing now.

What is your current position: student, other?

My position - student for the master degree. But I have ambitions to study further and to create my own startup as well.

"I have honest intention to build my own research work on their article (series of articles). This can be even better motivation for them because the original article/preprint is pure theory but I have applications in mind." - This is likely not as motivating to them as you think, as to them you are effectively: "someone who doesn't understand our work wants our help so they can write a new paper about it."

I think that in practice, most researchers have an interest in explaining their work to others -- that is, after all, what publication should be about. At the same time, one cannot answer the questions of everyone out there sending emails, and so for most people, there will also be a limit to how much time they are willing to invest in explaining papers to others. That's just being pragmatic.
As for what you can do to encourage them to explain things to you: Literally nothing. Other than doing it out of the good of their heart, there is nothing the authors can gain from interacting with you, and there is nothing you can offer them in return.
(It does occasionally happen that these interactions result in a collaboration, but that is more likely to happen if the person asking is already proficient in the area.)

Yes, every interaction is just an interruption unless you have something to offer in return.

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Most important things I should do during my CS undergrad if I want to get into a PhD program in the US
I recently switched my major to Computer Science at a top university in Costa Rica. I'm seeking advice on things I should do during my undergrad to improve my chances of gaining admission to a reputable graduate school in the US.
For context, I've already completed some college-level math subjects, including Calc I and II, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Probability Theory, and Introduction to Mathematical Proofs.
While my specific academic interests are not yet defined, I'm eager to pursue graduate studies in the US, as it has always been a dream of mine. I lived in New England for a couple of years and found it to be quite a charming place, but I'm open to pursuing a Master's or PhD anywhere in the US.
I would greatly appreciate any advice!

Research! Lots of available options for CS. While a bit taxing, scroll through Uni Departments and then their profs and see who's hiring remote (or even in person, or at your own uni) and do research!

See: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/176909/75368

I am not a CS major. But I would recommend having at least one research experience in your CV. I also recommend having a good relationship with the two referees who are willing to write letters of recommendation for you. Having these two requirements fullfilled will save you a lot of trouble when applying for a PhD, so that you can put your eggs in many baskets.

Actually, it is usually three letters.

In contrast to other answers and comments, let me suggest that, while some research experience is helpful, it isn't essential in the US for someone applying with only a bachelors. The doctoral program is designed to give you that experience in a more meaningful way than is possible in many (most?) undergraduate programs. If you can arrange something in research then do it, but don't feel you have a problem if it isn't available.
Doctoral admissions in the US is broad based. Grades matter, but mostly in upper level major (i.e. CS) courses and a few math courses, perhaps. Letters of recommendation are very important. The letters need to honestly predict your likelihood of success in a doctoral program and thereafter. They need to come from people who know you well enough to make that prediction. This means not just people you have taken a course with. This is where research is important, as it gives you a chance to work with someone who can speak for you with conviction.
Write a good Statement of Purpose for future studies. It needs some specificity, but doesn't need to propose a particular research project. A subfield of CS should be named (or possibly two) in which you want to contribute and have the skills to do so.
But, get close enough to a few CS (and maybe math) professors than can speak for you. Impress them with both your skills and your enthusiasm. Make sure they know something about your future plans. You will probably need three good letters.

Note that research as an undergraduate in the US is difficult to do for many reasons. One is the length of time available for it. You can't schedule results for translating the unknown to the known. The other is that the US undergraduate program is very broad (I don't know about Costa Rica) in which only about half of the courses are in the selected major. The others give a broad based education generally, including such things as writing, history, philosophy, etc. etc. In some other places the undergrad program is much more focused on one subject.
Even a course, directed by a researcher, that has you read some papers in a sub-field and discuss them in a seminar would be a plus as it would give you some sense about what research looks like even if there is insufficient time and resources to carry out a project.

Thanks for the advice!

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How to deal with a postdoc supervisor who blocks all attempts to do reasonable research?
I have a number of problems with my postdoc supervisor.

First of all, I do not have any funds for my research. According to local university rules, I can't submit any grant proposals myself; this is the supervisor's responsibility. When I request this, he always answers that he doesn't care and I must do research using existing resources. However, I am the first person here who started doing research in my area, and there are no facilities, equipment or even consumables available.
At the same time he requires me to publish research papers, and his suggestion is just to write low-quality papers using research methods from the early sixties.
When I manage to find a collaborator in another university, he replies that he is not going to work with anyone because other researchers will steal his (but actually my) results.
After seven months of my study I accidentally figured out that I could request funds from one of his projects, but when I suggested to do this, he simply rejected my idea.
When I ask about other possibilities to do research in this university, he replies that I must "search in Google" or "walk around and find them yourself", and he is not going to provide any information.
Despite this I have managed to finish one piece of research, and he included three persons as authors whom I have never even seen and their background is not relevant at all, explaining that they are a part of his team. Additionally, it is a common thing for him to come and start explaining to me that I am not able to do anything. These are just words, and I am confident in my qualifications, but still it is annoying.

Before I started working here, I had five years of experience as a principal investigator, and I am able to do research without any supervision. However, his behavior totally blocks any possibility.
Question: Is there any legal procedure to request external check of my working conditions or his qualification as a supervisor? I will appreciate any other recommendations as well.

Don't walk. Run!

Fire your postdoc supervisor. He is abusing you. He has demonstrated that he has no respect for you, either professionally or personally. He will not write you a strong recommendation letter when you go on the academic job market. Get out now. You can do far better.

Why do you stay?

If you already have PI experience, you most probably already have enough experience to get some better (independent) position even if your present job has only limited success. The longer you stay here, the higher chance that you have a long, fruitless period in your CV. Leave as fast as you can.

We can't answer legal questions -- you'll need to talk to a lawyer if you're serious about that.  Putting that aside, do you have a question?

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Should I ask for a recommendation letter from a professor who has a bad non-academic reputation?
I am an undergraduate interested in applying for graduate school in a physical sciences program. I have a good relationship with a few of my professors (it's a very small department). I would like to ask if they would be willing to write a letter of recommendation for my application.
There is one professor who I respect greatly and who has told me in the past that he would be willing to write a glowing letter. He has a great academic reputation; he publishes the most out of all the professors in the small department and in (what I have heard) are top journals in his field.
The trouble is that he has a poor non-academic reputation. For instance, a quick Google of his name will yield a page full of news articles regarding his troubles with the law. These are the top results from the search.
Would a poor public reputation like this have a negative impact on the effectiveness of the reference? In theory, I know it shouldn't. Yet I am aware that real life hardly ever works as 'in theory'.
EDIT: the "troubles with the law" involve an impaired driving conviction. For context, this is in North America.

"Would a poor public reputation like this reflect negatively on my application as a student?"  Probably not.

To me, the key question seems to be whether the type of misbehavior is something that is likely to be seen as impinging on their judgement as an academic.
For example, if the person was known to have been prosecuted for fraud in a company they ran, that would be quite likely to affect perception of their honesty and judgement in recommendation letters.  In the example you give, however, I think that an impaired driving conviction is likely to be viewed as a form of misbehavior largely orthogonal to conduct and judgement as an academic, and therefore not likely to be any problem for you.

I can't say I have ever checked up on an applicant's recommender in quite a few years of reading applications.
I suppose if this person is a byword within the profession for poor behavior or thoughtlessness, that could be a strike against you. That the apparent issue is with mind-altering substances does set off some faint alarms in the back of my head; it might be worth checking (quietly) with others in the field to see if this person has a poor reputation (e.g. at conferences).
But on the whole, I don't think this is likely to cause you a problem.

I don't care, that's correct. What's important is the applicant's qualities, not their recommender's. Anything else is a popularity lottery, which seems eminently pointless as well as pointlessly biased.


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How difficult is it to obtain a postgraduate qualification in the academic field that's unrelated to your undergraduate programme?
How hard is it to obtain postgraduate qualification in the academic field unrelated to your undergraduate programme (or sharing a rather strenuous connection with it)? I'm looking for answers that would accommodate one's personal experiences in doing a U-turn in their academic career, and in switching to a totally new field of study (e.g. from Theoretical Physics to Art History, or vice versa).

Pretty difficult. There'd be a problem convincing the new-field admissions committee that you are competent, given that you'd not have coursework or letters of recommendation from people in that field, presumably. Self-study is hard to document. Enthusiasm or professed interest, alone, are not enough: undergrad programs provide quite a bit of information, and also enculturate people to the contemporary context.

This really depends on what kind of U-turn you want to make and what kind of additional resources you avail yourself of. In this day and age, because we have access to so many resources (from university extension courses to online classes to self study via Youtube and the WWW), a dedicated student can build their skills in a field not necessarily related to their undergraduate degree.
That said, it depends what kind of U-turn you want to make. To pick up your example, if you have a BA in Art History and you want to get an MS in Physics, I doubt that any serious program is going to let you waltz right in. However, if you took a series of courses through a university extension program, or, perhaps, even online, that covered the terrain of an undergraduate physics program -- and if you also demonstrated your competence and interest in the field through an independent research program, you would probably be able to find a program somewhere.
On the other hand, if you have a BS is a technical field and you want to get an MA, programs are usually more accommodating. In my field (politics and policy), students with an undergraduate BS can often add substantial value because they have an in-depth understanding of math and programming that allows them to gain more traction when analyzing research questions using quantitative methods.
In either case, it will greatly improve your chances of admission if you can articulate why you want to make the U-turn and also explain how your particular path adds value to the program you are applying to. If you find a school and a program that excites you, try contacting some of the professors at the program and see if you can meet or talk with them. During the conversation, you can make the case why you want to move into their field and ask them how you can best prepare yourself.
"This above all; to thine own self be true" -- W. Shakespeare


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What features should be included in your actual accomplishments and skills to be accepted in a top university like MIT
I was wondering about
 how can one apply for a PhD program in a top ranked university.
I can tell you about a namely accomplishments and skills which is labelled as 'very good' for a graduated M.Sc student in an average university so that you can consult me and the people who almost have a similar accomplishments and skills.
To be more precise I would like to know:

How can one be accepted and get the scholarship for a very top-ranked university like Berkeley, MIT. For example are the following accomplishments and skills satisfactory?
If not, which points should be added or improved generally?
How much is it matter how old are you for applying for PhD at these places?
What features differentiate the CV of someone admitted to a top school (MIT)versus someone admitted to an average school (Calgary Canada).

Two ISI papers Including one 'Power systems, IEEE Transactions
on ' and 'Electric Power Components and Systems'.
IELTS and GRE meet the minimum requirements.
Having a very strong recommendation letter. Also, my supervisor professor is one of the top (top 50) in his field.
Two years teaching experience in a small university as a lecturer.

P.S. I have B.Sc and M.Sc in Electrical Engineering.

I would hope that one includes the same content when applying to a top university as opposed to one that is an average university.

I just edited the question and added your comment as question 4. Thanks for improving the post. @Compass

I think you misunderstood. A CV or resume should be consistent, i.e. you should not really be tailoring it to an individual institution. You should be tailoring it to be a representation of you regardless of what school you are applying to.

Sorry, I didn't get your point. @Compass

If I were to apply to MIT and Calgary today, I would use the same resume for Calgary as I would to MIT. MIT doesn't get additional treatment because it's a higher tier school than Calgary. If a change applies to MIT in the CV, it would also apply to Calgary.

Sure you are right sir. My professor told me that my CV is ok for average universities like Calgary(CA) or Adelaide(AU). But I would like to know is it still fine for MIT or Berkeley? Or Should I still work more to improve? @Compass

You mean the form of the CV or your actual accomplishments and skills?

I mean my actual accomplishments and skills. @VladimirF

It is not very clear from your question. So you are thinking about additional period of getting experience somewhere before applying or something else?

Yes that's right. @VladimirF

You should probably edit your question to make it clear.

Sure, I will do it tomorrow, It's late now. Thanks for your assistance, @VladimirF

There's no magic "good enough" level. You're competing against the other applicants for a limited number of spaces; a CV which is good enough one year might not be good enough the next depending on who else applies. Also remember that MIT is a relatively small school, which means the competition is that much tougher. I'd suggest you run your COMPLETE CV past your professor and ask his opinion; this isn't something the Internet can really answer for you.

@Compass CVs and resumes are not the same thing. A CV is mostly a list of your achievements so won't change very much depending on where you're applying to. But a resume is very much intended to be tailored to a specific application since it's essentially a document saying "Why you shoud hire me." A resume should detail how your skills are appropriate to the position you're applying for.

The question is edited and more clarified based on your comments. @VladimirF

The question is edited and more clarified based on your comments. @Compass

what is it that you want to do with a PhD from MIT?  what are your career goals?  academic?  R&D?

Although your question doesn't specify it, I assume you're looking for admission to a top-ranked PhD program in electrical engineering.  I'm one step away, in a top-ranked program in computer science, so take my answer with a grain of salt.

Two ISI papers Including one 'Power systems, IEEE Transactions on' and 'Electric Power Components and Systems'.

Since you already have a master's degree, having a couple of publications is a minimum requirement for admission to a top PhD program.  Where the papers were published is of secondary importance (although your emphasis of "ISI" over "IEEE" is a little worrying).  What really matters are the actual results in the papers.  Are they good results?  Are they well-known to people in your field?  Are your papers likely to be highly cited?

IELTS and GRE meet the minimum requirements.

"Meet the minimum requirements" is not what top programs are looking for, on any axis.  Fortunately, test scores don't really matter all that much (except, at public universities like mine, the spoken English test).

Having a very good recommendation letter as my supervisor professor is one of the top guy (top 50) in his field.

The fact that a top guy in your field wrote the letter matters far less than what the letter actually says about you.  A weak letter will kill your chances, especially if it's written by someone well known in your field.

Two years teaching experience in a small university as a lecturer.

Hmm.  Okay.  can't hurt.

If not, which points should be added or improved generally?

You really haven't given enough detail to point out anything that needs to be improved.  What matters most is the quality of your actual research contributions, and that's just not deducible from the information you've given.

3) How much is it matter how old are you for applying for phd at these places?

Not at all.  Age discrimination is illegal in the US.

4) What does a namely CV should contain when applying to a top university as opposed to one that is an average university (like Calgary Canada).

I assume you mean "What features differentiate the CV of someone admitted to a top school versus someone admitted to an average school?"  (No matter where you apply, your CV should accurately and honestly reflect your accomplishments.  Don't add bloat.  We can tell.)
You may be able to gain admission to a lower-ranked school on the basis of grades and test scores.  But the competition for admission to the very top ranked schools is absolutely fierce.  (My department gets 2000 graduate applicants per year, from which we admit about 100 PhD students and about 50 MS students.)  If you want to be admitted, you really have to manifest like a successful PhD student already.  You don't just want papers.  You need  high-quality, high-visibility, well-written results, ideally which would not have been possible without your contributions.  You need the beginnings of a well-reasoned and compelling research vision.  You need to display intellectual strength, depth, maturity, and taste.  Well-known leaders in your field must sing your praises in technical, personal, and credible detail.
If you have all that, your CV will take care of itself.

Dear @jeffe Are you In MIT? How many ISI papers you had? and where did you get your M.SC? (Plz, don't take it personally I'm just asking to know more about a namely PhDstudent condition). Although your emphasis of "ISI" over "IEEE" is a little worrying Ididn't understand. You may know that IEEE trans on power sys is the highest rank (flagship) journal in Electrical eng. isn’t that enough? I live in Middle East. Iknow that's every year one or two papers from our country are Accepted in this journal .Ihope it will be cited someway well, but it has just got accepted so we should wait toget more

citations. The results are good; we improved an earlier method, which was published in the same journal few years ago (IEEE trans). Also, It was written very well as the reviewers commented on our paper. I heard from my prof that’s in US they say the deal is transaction (meaning the IEEE trans on power sys) IS it true? Hmm. Okay. can't hurt. what do you mean? Thanks a lot for your attention and precise answer @jeffe

@Electricman JeffE's profile will give you the information you are asking for.

Thanks you sir, I've got that part of information already. @StrongBad

Are you In MIT? How many ISI papers you had? — No, I'm at Illlinois with a PhD from Berkeley. I have no idea how many ISI papers I have, nor how many ISI papers anyone else in my department has, despite serving on admissions, hiring, and tenure committees and grant review panels for several years. Nobody in top departments cares where papers are indexed.

I heard from my prof that’s in US they say the deal is transaction (meaning the IEEE trans on power sys) — Yes, IEEE Transactions papers are highly valued in EE departments. But you won't be the only applicant who has one.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


text:
Three month delay in reviewing the revision of paper, Editor doesn't even answer the email
I've submitted a paper in an ISI journal, i.e. in Taylor and Francis. The first submission date of the manuscript was 30-May-2014. We received the first revision result on 27-July-2014. Hopefully, the result of reviewing our paper was optimistic as the paper status was accept with change; we had only some minor comments. We submitted the answer of revision on 15 Aug. They didn't reply our revision yet.
So, I've sent an e-mail to the  Editor in chief, but he didn't even reply our email.
The handling editor identity is not available for us. What is your proposal in this case?

I would begin by writing several more times to the Editor-in-Chief.  Be polite and brief, but emphasize the lack of contact.

How much should I wait to send the new email to him? I've sent an email to him 2 weeks ago. @PeteL.Clark

People have different ideas about email etiquette, but since a total lack of response is much worse, you shouldn't be afraid to write back after what you think is a reasonable amount of time.  I would say a week or two after the first email is quite reasonable, so you should feel free to write back now.  The interval between emails can decrease if you haven't gotten a response.  If you get three emails from someone in one week, then the idea that you actually need to write back suddenly becomes much more clear.

thanks, actually I don't want to make them angry, but I am afraid that the faith of this paper get similar to my other paper in Elsevier journal. They've delayed in reviewing our other paper, so we sent them one email but after one year they replied and told us we sent your paper to 8 reviewers but they all didn't have knowledge to review it, so please introduce us 3 reviewers if u know lol.@PeteL.Clark

Professionals don't get angry when people try to contact them.  Or maybe they do, but they don't allow it to influence their judgment.  As an author, you also can't live in fear of editorial boards: if things don't work out at one journal, you try again with another.  That's the deal for them as well as you.

Have you tried emailing the admin person?  Usually there is an admin person that looks after the paper trails.  The EiC will probably more likely to respond to this person's email.

I agree that three months seem a little excessive for checking your revisions and providing a verdict. Since you received a minor revision on your first version, there does not seem to be any point of additional review so the manuscript must be with the editors still. Since the review process seems to have passed fairly quickly, there does not seem to be a general problem of a slow journal. Therefore, there can be a very reasonable explanation for the delay.
So, the only option forward is to contact the editors again. You should also check to see if there are more than only one "point of entrance" to the editors of the journal. If there are you may try another. Also, in case you have not done so, do check your junk mail folder to see if some form mail from the journal has been redirected by mistake. This occasionally happens if journals use such systems. Unfortunately there are no other routes to go other than to repeat the attempts to contact. A reasonable period is perhaps around three weeks between contact attempts.

I agree with all of this except the "three weeks between contact attempts".  If the editorial board is completely nonresponsive, then either there is some technical issue which you should learn about sooner rather than later, or they are being absolutely unprofessional in not responding.  When someone is evading you when they shouldn't be, you have the right to use increasing alacrity to get in contact with them.  (If on the other hand they respond at all, even to say, "Sorry, we're looking into this", then three weeks seems quite reasonable.)

@Electricman: I find your last comment to be a bit inappropriate.  Do you want an answer based on ethnic stereotypes?!?  As in my comment above, I would assume that the editorial board consists of professionals who understand the basic ethics of the situation until proven wrong.

right, I got my answer from your other answer. I will assume he is professional and send him other emails.@PeteL.Clark

@PeteL.Clark. Yes, non-responsiveness is difficult to handle. This is why it is important to see if there are alternative contacts. Unfortunately, the publishers of a journal is often quite anonymous but that would be another route to try but only at a very late stage.

@Electricman. Age, or any other characteristic, should not make much difference. Editors that do not perform will not stay for long in a good journal. this editor is there and is therefore likely doing the job well. At least that would be my starting assumption.

I hope that is true @PeterJansson


text:
How to compose a great recommendation letter?
I was asked to compose a recommendation/reference letter for a Computer Engineer that works as a Researcher in the Research Center I am supervisor. I don't know if Academia is the right site to post , but since the nature of the job is Research and people involved "Research Engineers", I believe is the right place.
So, I need to write a great recommendation/reference letter, but the problem is I have never written a letter of this kind before. I've seen many of them, and even more on the web but the problem is that they all look "copy-pasted" and not written in a way that would make me believe that the author of this letter really spent time on it, believing in the skills of his employee and really wanted to recommend them.
I've already written the letter, the best I could and I will like to ask about some parts of it, how they sound and if they could be any better.

As a first paragraph, I wrote who I am, the position I have in the Research Center and what is the purpose of this letter:

My name is... I am a ...
  The purpose of this letter, is to serve as a reference to my cooperation with Mr ...

In the second paragraph I wrote about the position of the person (Research Engineer) and for how long he worked with us:

Mr. X  joined our team in the X Research Center as a full-time Research Engineer under an ongoing X month contract...

At this point I don't know how I could point out better the fact the the person was under a normal full-paid contract and not just given a "European Grant" to work with us. I wrote they were full-time, but still there are many people that join programs after studies that work for a few months as Engineers in Research Centers. In this case, I want to stress that they were working as a normal Research Engineer, especially chosen for skills and paid a normal salary for the position as Engineer. Maybe add something like "full paid contract"
In the 3rd paragraph I wrote under what framework the person worked (European project) and a few words where and how they were involved. I didn't want to go into great details here as I believe this stuff could be easily read from their great CV. Is it wise to describe exactly what he did (Names of real-life applications that was part of developing etc). I pointed out that they deeply involved in what they did, how well they integrated with the rest of the people and how motivated they were and that they actively contributed in the project. Anything else I could add here?
As a last line I would like to show that I can't recommend them enough, but without getting "too excited". I want it to be serious, I want it to leave no doubts. Also since the person is young and is interested in continuing with post graduate studies, or working as a Researcher or even getting a computer engineer position in a private company. Is it okay if I mention all of them? Usually we recommend someone for one type of position. But this position, working as computer engineer doing research (aka Research Engineer), leaves no doubt that he would be great as a PhD student, as a researcher or as a software engineer. So I wrote:

For all the aforementioned reasons I would like to highly recommend X, as a strong candidate for future postgraduate studies, research and employment offers.

What do you think about it? How could I make it better and is there something I should change? If you don't like some part and you give me an alternative please point out why you don't like the part, as some times its a bit of personal taste and not that something is wrong. Would be great, if you could post some examples of letters you composed or parts of them, or an example from the web that you consider great.

In astrophysics, the field is narrow enough that it is customary to compare the person you recommend to other past applicants.

You could "recommend him without reservation," at the end.

There was a good link that I'd found on this topic, while applying to graduate school:
Advice to Graduate School Recommendation Letter Writers
The above link is a pithy list of points to be kept in mind by new letter writers. As a summary, I'd like to highlight some sections of it that I've found repeated in other such articles as well:

Be Concrete
If you take away just one piece of concrete advice, let it be this.
The single biggest problem with most letters is that they are filled
  with abstract generalities and infinitives. If we don't know you or
  your institution, we can't judge what any of these statements mean
  relative to our standards. Always consider the illustrative anecdote:
Due to deadline pressure, I asked him to grow a pumpkin in just one month. As you know it takes over 100 days to grow a pumpkin, but over the weekend he devised a new method to accelerate their growth. On Monday morning I arrived to find not just a pumpkin but a steaming, flavorful pie.

Anecdote about acts of raw coding are only so helpful in understanding
  research potential, but they're better than nothing (see the section
  on Corporate Letters, below). An extra book or paper they read, and
  demonstrated understanding of (again, be concrete about why you
  believe this), goes a long way.
Corporate Letters
An important special case is the corporate letter: when you, the
  letter-writer, work in industry and have no academic affiliation. Many
  corporate letters (like many academic letters, but more so) tend to be
  vapid, clearly written in a different culture and for a different
  audience. Unless they actually did academic research with you, here
  are some suggestions for improving them.
A common mistake is to focus on teamwork. This is important even in
  academia, but often this is the primary focus of the letter, which
  makes it less valuable. Of course we care about it, but it's secondary
  to their technical skills.

Tell us if they learned something particularly quickly, mastered a
  complex technology, or solved a problem others were stuck on. Give
  us a paragraph of details.
If you have a concrete reason to evaluate research potential, do so concretely. Otherwise, don't bother.
Give us a brief bio-sketch, including educational qualifications.
  4.Put the applicant in context, and tell us the context. It's fine to relate it to your own student days, or to your experience hiring students.
  E.g.

Compared to the students I studied with at Cucumber and Melon University, and the ones I now recruit from there, I would put him in
  the top 10%.

(+1) great link!

This is what I would recommend and it is not far off from what you have outlined:
I am assuming your will start the letter cordially to whomever will receive the letter ("Dear so-and-so" or "To whom it may concern"). I also assume you're writing on letter head where your name and contact information and date for the letter is written.
1st part (paragraph)
First state that you write the letter on request by the applicant. Follow up by stating who you are in terms of your professional status (expertise) and your relation to the applicant. The purpose is to make the recipient aware of your standing relative to the applicant, it makes it easier to value your comments. This paragraph should obviously not be very long since it is not you who are to be evaluated, but still long enough to provide a fair picture of your qualifications.
2nd part (one or more paragraphs)
Outline the most important aspect of the applicants merits that are sought for the position, if it is a teaching job then etaching experience, if it is research then research related. It may end up more than one paragraph because you may need to discuss the research done (type of research past and present) in one paragraph and then follow up on the person's ability to attarct funding and colaboration in a second (depending on length). You also need to value the publications briefly in terms of journal impact factors and citations, in other words the quality of the published work.
3rd part (one or more paragraphs)##
You need to write about the personal side of the applicant, starting out with for example ability to collaborate and contribute to the research and work environment. This can be followed up bu more personal aspects and "soft values" that descfibes the persons pesronality at work and elsewhere. You obviously need to focius on aspects that may be relevant for evaluating the applicant as a colleague.
Final Statement
Finish of by summing up the major points above and express your personal support for the person in terms of how the person would fit the announced position. You can for example tie back to your own expoerience and position and value in terms of how you see the applicant relative to others you have worked with and so on.
Final  Points to Consider
The length of a letter can vary greatly. Honesty is what everyone expects. I think it is valuable to also mention weaknesses as long s they are done fairly and with insight. The employer will want to know the person, not just the glossy exterior. This part is always trickiest to write and also very personal so additional advice is hard to provide.

Just a comment: in my field, one does not write about weaknesses. Anything remotely negative in the letter is a killer. Its unfortunate, but that's the tradition.


text:
Supervisor does not ask for opinion of graduate student about an undergraduate thesis that the graduate student assisted with
As a graduate student, I have recently supervised an undergraduate with their thesis work in co-operation with my own supervisor. I took care of the daily in-detail supervision, and my supervisor had the "grand overview" of the project and where it should lead to. This went on for almost 7 months.
Today, in roughly 3 hours, is the defense of the undergraduate. However, my supervisor hasn't asked me for my opinion on the thesis that was handed in. Actually, since it was handed in 2 weeks ago, I haven't been asked about it at all. The thesis will be evaluated by an external referee and the supervisor at a public defense today -- if it wasn't for the undergraduate student telling me, I wouldn't even know that the defense was today!
I find this weird, and to some extent unprofessional. As the main leader and supervisor, they should, in my opinion, discuss the thesis with me to hear my opinion and include me in this process. After all, I did help with the "brute work".
Part of me wants to let my supervisor know that I feel a little left out. On the other hand, I don't want to be difficult. What do you think I should do?

I can't answer because I don't know, but this sounds a lot like my Masters supervisor and the PhD student who was with us every day. I met with the supervisor perhaps 5 times during the entire project. He wasn't even there for my defense. But I don't know if the PhD student talked to him about the students, or not. I thought it was a little weird at the time, but maybe this is normal.

Thanks for your input. Could also be that I am "touchy"..

Seems normal to me. He might have ignored you because he had nothing to tell you, aka everything is fine. He should have thanked you, yeah, but don't overestimate the amount of stuff going on in a professor's head. Job's done, that all :)

While you most likely deserved more aknowledgement, you are also complaining that your supervisor didn't waste more of your time with this process. If everything looked right, he most likely thought that you can spend your time on much more meaningful tasks. To be honest, often in similar situations I wish it was a way for me to be left out of the process, as I can barely find time to read articles/theses....

Maybe he is not allowed to have you giving input on the PhD report. Being involved in the process is one thing, but once things go formal, some barriers may have to be erected. For instance, imagine a prof having friendly chats/lunches with other groups' PhD students, once they happen to be made their internal examiners, this is made to stop or drastically toned down.

In general, supervisors should "acknowledge" their students more. We often forget to tell people when they are doing well and only point out mistakes.
Your supervisor should have most definitely acknowledged your help with the student. He should have thanked you for helping out with the student and ideally given you feedback about your supervision.
As for comments on the thesis, depending on your official role and the rules of the university/department, he may not be able to talk to you about the grades of other students. That said, he could acknowledge you to let you know that. If he is allowed to discuss the grades, it can be a learning opportunity to talk about the process. That said, grading is generally not a fun part of the job, and he may simply be "protecting" you from an aspect of work. It is not out of place to talk to him about the thesis (either the final product or grade). He will let you know if the conversation goes someplace it should not.
The one place that he should most definitely try and acknowledge you is to the external referee. Something as little as "a lot of this project was managed by my PhD student Billy Jean" can help your networking.

Just that it is more than a bit weird to have a student supervise another, and not taking any input on the result (even be forbidden to by local rules).

The prof may not be allowed to tell the OP the student's grade, but I can't imagine a law/policy that would forbid the prof from asking the OP for his opinion.

Perhaps it's not necessarily forbidden, just frowned upon? I should think this is the case at our institution. No PhD student at our institution would, even if involved in the supervision, begrudge the markers if they do not ask for opinion, the responsibility is considered to lie on the markers to make sure the marking is taking all information into account that is relevant for the final outcome. I am, to make clear, not talking at all about acknowledgement or co-authorship, which is an entirely different issue and this is handled very scrupulously here.

I wrote and asked the student, she got the highest mark (still no response/reaction from my supervisor regarding this...). I'm just happy for her and that the defense went well and will write it in my CV -- and in the future I will not have any expectations from my supervisor regarding these things at all

I can think of three possibilities, in addition to StrongBad's "oversight" possibility, which are not necessarily exclusive of each other.

He doesn't want your opinion because he needs and wants to form his own, independent opinion of the work in order to execute his function at the defense. The (lead) supervisor bears the brunt of the responsibility and blame if poor, or outright bad, work is brought to a defense.  Some people may simply be cautious that the opinions of others may confuse their own in such a situation, and so avoid them until they can process them more objectively.
University and/or department rules may specifically prohibit you from "being a part of this process."  In my oral qualifying exams as a graduate student, it was specifically prohibited for anyone other than my committee from being in the room.  No students, no friends, no other professors, no one at all.  My Ph.D. defense was an open defense that anyone could attend, which is standard across universities and countries.  You may wish to consult the policies of your university concerning the defense of an undergraduate thesis.
Either you were there for nothing more than to make sure the lab doesn't blow up—in which case there is no expectation that you have a substantive opinion on the work, and so no reason to ask you—, or you were there to monitor the quality of the work done (as well)—in which case it was part of your job to report significant issues, as well as just reporting on progress in general, bad or otherwise.  As the saying goes: "No news is good news."  If you said nothing bad about the work, or barely said anything at all, then he already has your opinion.  If you'd been reporting good and bad things (if any) regularly, then your supervisor again already had your opinion.

In any case, asking your supervisor about the matter in a calm, reasonable way should get you an answer.


text:
Correcting a paper that just came back from review, what should I do?
After this one paper came back with minor revisions requested, I'm revisiting my data and making sure to check that everything stated in the paper is factual.
Finally, I found a few errors that were not pointed out by the reviewers and need correction.
The first error is that one of the charts had inaccurate error bars, which are much smaller now after the correction and actually support further my conclusions.
The second thing that I want to improve, which is not an error per se, is to get a new set of data for one of the graphs to substitute the current one which has an outlier point.
None of these corrections would alter the final conclusions of the study.
Since these corrections were not requested by the reviewers, I'm afraid the reviewers and the editor might think that this is inappropriate and will end up requesting another round of revisions or, even worse, rejecting the paper...
How do you think that the editor would take these unsolicited changes?

If you can justify the changes, there's no problem with making them. The first error for example should be clearly acceptable, if you said you performed error analysis in this way and it turned out there's a bug in your code.
The second is more dicey. Superficially, it might seem like you're altering your data because you have an outlier point (ergo, it's confirmation bias). You will need a convincing explanation why the new data set is better than the old one, why the outlier should not matter, etc.
In any case, if you make these kind of unsolicited changes, do be clear about them in your response to reviewers / cover letter. Otherwise, reviewers would have to read the entire paper again.

To add: If OP makes additional changes to the paper, don't forget to clearly mention (and justify) this when resubmitting, in the response to the reviewers (assuming you are writing one).

Agreed.  The first is a no brainer.  Second is more of an issue and also opens up the can of worms that you will continually tweak the paper while it is in review (doing more work).  My advice is insert the first.  For the second, do a new paper later that allows you to replicate (with some change) the earlier study AND that goes further into looking at some aspect of the phenomena (so that the paper is not purely a replication).  Also, note that what seems "big" in one aspect, the outlier, may be small in comparison to idea that two studies showed same rough correlation.


text:
Practicality of attaining a law degree despite difficulty remembering facts?
I am > 40 years old and have been heavily involved in IT for my adult life. 20-25 years ago I successfully studied 2 years of Information Technology at a polytechnic (I've always been good with computers).   I have subsequently enjoyed a moderately successful career as a systems administrator.
I am fairly certain I have a mental deficiency with respect of memorizing lots of facts - although in my current profession I have been largely able to compensate for this by having strong working models based on fundamental principles, and - of course - ready access to the Internet to help me over memory related hurdles.
I have a solid understanding (for a lay person) of the basis of law and a fairly analytical mind, and would like to study law part time in New Zealand or Australia - either online or in Auckland.
Is attaining a law degree "down under" with my impediment for recalling facts realistic, or does my difficulty recalling the names and minutia of case law by rote preclude me from completing a degree which would allow me to pass the bar?

Have you seen a doctor or mental health professional about this?  Of course, they might be able to suggest therapies that would help - but more to the point for this question, having a formal diagnosis could make you eligible for various forms of accommodation.

@nateeldredge That is a sensible idea which I may follow up on.  That said, I do not believe I would receive a formal diagnosis of  mental deficiency, nor have my own  feeble attempts from time to time doing mental exercises helped.   I am aware that not everyone is university material - but I am not sure how reliant Law degrees are on recall of facts.

How well do you remember films?
I had a similar problem, though not as bad as you describe. I found it helpful to think of each seminal case as an old black-and-white movie with a dramatic scene as judge's read their verdicts. I forget dates, but I remember the meanings and that proved much more important.
Side note: A law degree is (typically) a very field-specific endeavor. If you have a good reason to pursue it, then I wish you the best. But, just in case you've never heard this before: unless you plan to practice law somewhere, law school probably doesn't make good sense.


text:
Is it possible to get hired without post-doctorate experience in the chemical/pharmaceutical industry?
I recently completed my PhD and I'm now looking for a job in the chemical/pharmaceutical industry. Either in production or in research.
From somebody on the inside (senior position in research in a major pharma company), I was told that actually nobody gets hired without PostDoc experience. However, PostDoc is no guarantee, I was also told, for a position. My feeling is that I rather spend the time on the job, learning what is important for the company. Simply put, I don't want to do PostDoc because I don't feel like that (but that's another story).
Here the question is: Has anybody gotten into chemical/pharma industry without PostDoc and without using inter-personal connections (that means only by directly applying for positions stated on the website of the company)?

What is your specific area of research?

I'm happy to provide this detail, but I wonder why it is relevant?

I am in exactly the same situation. Big pharma and biotech companies hire either BS with 3-5 years of industry experience of MS with 1-3 years of experience. A postdoc can get you a senior scientist (R4) position. Alas, PhDs fall through like ugly ducklings -- too expensive on one side and too inexperienced on the other. Besides, nowadays it seems like you need a postdoc just to get a postdoc. I am not against postdocs but I have a family and I've stretched thin making it through PhD. I've been in school for 20 years; when will I finally get a job??

Yes, it is definitely possible, as I have students who did it. But it really depends on the type of position sought: position advertisements usually list a “level of experience required”, so be sure to check it before applying, and possible taylor your application/interview in response to that.

PS: Regarding “without using inter-personal connections”, I'm not sure how to interpret that. Surely during your PhD, and your job search, you have met (will meet) people at various places. Why would you refuse to use these people to help your application, or your inside knowledge of position openings in a given company?

Thanks. About "interpersonal", that means is there a realistic chance to get hired in a company when you don't know anyone there who can put your letter on the top of the pile.
And your making a good point about the particular position sought. That definitely is important.

Five years ago, I would have said that you need a postdoc to get a job in industry.  Now, I know an increasing number of graduate students who are getting industry jobs right out of grad school.  However, my experience is mostly in biotech, not chemistry.
I know several graduate students who went straight into biotech jobs without doing a postdoc.  For some, they had a contact at the company where they were hired who knew their skills and personality. For at least one, he had a very specific skill set and applied online to a Scientist position at a company and got the job (he was their 5th employee and is still here 5 years later).
Do a postdoc if you still need to build skills that will make you more marketable, or if it's in a lab that is industry-friendly where you can form great industry contacts.  If you already have a good skill set, work now on growing your network for the types of jobs you seek.  Having a great network of contacts is a key to a successful job search.


text:
PhD thesis Microsoft Word templates
What "beautiful" looking PhD thesis Microsoft Word templates do you recommend using?

LAAAAAATEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEX

Additionally, thats generally not up to you. Universities tend to have VERY strict regulations on how the thesis should look like.

Compare Google Image searches for beautiful Microsoft Word template and beautiful LaTeX template.

To amplify the comment by Ander, you should ask around your university, look its website, ask the office where you are supposed to submit, ask other recent graduates or ABD students, and find out what is being used by others. Your university will have formatting requirements, and someone will have a Word template that conforms to those requirements.


text:
How to collect data for dissertation if the work wasn't published
I'm starting my dissertation in which I'm creating a mobile application for public use.
My problem is I need evidences to support my hypothesis and I was informed
that I will only be allowed to collect data from users inside the company
for which I'm doing the app, since the application won't be released in time
of my deadline.
I think this might invalidate my data since these are users who are aware
of the application development.
I thought I could do some quizzes and try to have "outside" people to fill them
but I'm not sure if this enough to support my hypothesis since these people
didn't had any contact with my application.
So my question is if using data from quizzes about a possible solution (like
mine) is enough to support my dissertation since I can't let people try my app
by themselves.

thanks you really gave me a good idea which i think i can go on with... My application is related with healthcare by the way...

Very hard to answer without knowing the details of your work, the app in question, more background, and what other contributions you can make part of your dissertation. But… even if a formal release isn't possible by the deadline, couldn't you arrange for testing on outside people but on your devices (instead of theirs)? That way, you can load the app on a series of say, 10 devices, then have people test it (sort of a focus group)…


text:
What should a student do about a professor who uses class time poorly?
One of my professors is quite enthusiastic about teaching the subject. He often deviates from the main content and gets lost in details vastly beside or beyond the matter at hand - which is interesting, though not immediately helpful.
Effectively, this means that he regularly fails to complete the day's chapter. To compensate, he always overruns on time (15 minutes are not unusual at all).
Despite that, he failed to finish several chapters that (according to him) were intended to be taught (and indeed have been in the year before), and did not discuss or even provide solutions to previous homework due to lack of time in class.
I'm looking for advice how to deal with this situation. How can we make him stick to relevant content?
My fear is that the students will a) lack knowledge from missing several chapters, leading to future problems in subsequent courses and b) have worse conditions to succeed in this course's exam, as they lack relevant information and experience.
I'm baffled how he is able to continue like this - he clearly noticed the problem and also apologized to the students about it several times, but did not yet change his habits at all.
As I have already talked to him about other problems before, which he is attempting to fix now, I do not want to "complain" to him again if possible. I'm also a bit unsure what that would accomplish, seeing that he appears to be completely unable to keep his lectures on point.
If the students were to talk to the department head, is he likely to take action, or is this rather within the professors individual judgement? If they do, I'm clueless to imagine how he would take it.
Regarding the missing homework solutions, I considered requesting written solutions to the tasks we failed to look at in class. However, this kind of exercise does not benefit from just solutions and instead requires explanations.

If you want to learn more than is covered in class, you should learn independently.  I'm skeptical that "covering all the chapters" is better than "getting lost in the details."  It depends on the purpose of the class.

@AnonymousPhysicist I'm afraid that's what it comes to. This is roughly a third of the material lost, and it is difficult to learn by oneself, so I'm hoping there might be a different approach.

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/28320/5640

Have you considered actually reading the chapters he doesn't cover thoroughly?  If you did that, you'd be able to ask questions about anything the reading didn't make clear.

@BobBrown Yes, I tried that. It is a new field to us and takes several times longer than having it explained first, which is unusual, but is the case in this case. It really is not time efficient. And, after all, that's why I'm visiting classes and this course in particular.

Do you believe the professor is aware of the problem?

There have been many helpful answers and comments so far, and I'll certainly be able to cope with the situation. To be more clear in this question though, I want to clarify: We are talking about missing large parts of what should be included in the course. Imagine an Analysis I course that is missing derivatives because we're still (without need) learning how the natural numbers work. So in my opinion this is less about spoon-feeding.

@FábioDias Considering he apologized a few times, I believe so. Cannot be sure that he maybe still sees it as a minor issue.

I disagree with the close vote as off-topic. This question can be easily extended to graduate school classes.

I'm voting to close as off-topic. A graduate student would just learn the not-covered material on their own.

I would encourage you to view this not as poor teaching style, necessarily, but as a particular teaching style which may not suit you.
You should not take for granted the fact that this teacher actually seems to care about the material and be excited about it. That is a great opportunity for you to learn and you should take advantage of it if you can. Ask questions, try to gain some of this person's intuition and insight into the topic - you are probably paying for access to this professor, and this is a way to learn things you cannot learn from the book.
You should describe the teaching style in any reviews you submit about the course or professor. Some students would love the type of course you describe, and some (such as yourself) will not find that it meets their needs. This is the proper way to give feedback. Complaining to the administration will probably not be effective because the professor is not doing anything wrong (except perhaps running classes too long), just adopting a particular teaching style.

I normally tried to end my classes a couple of minutes early out of consideration to students who had to move between buildings.  I accidentally ran over time at the start of one semester because the schedule blocks had changed and a student who later graduated with a summa, put up a hand.  "Dr. Brown, what time is this class supposed to end?"  Polite but pointed.

Is this graduate school? Then I have to recommend sucking it up and covering the chapters on your own. This is a point in your education when you should be learning material mostly independently, with professors to guide you.  In this case the professor provides guidance by selecting a book, designing a syllabus and course outline telling you what you are expected to learn, plus you get interesting lectures that deviate from the material of the book. He is hopefully also willing and able to answer questions through email or in office hours.
If his teaching style doesn't agree with you, then you can avoid taking courses from him in the future. But you should completely be able to learn the course material without having it explicitly covered in lecture.

It is an undergrad course, though I'm about to enter a Master's program, and would like to keep visiting his classes there. Good points either way.

@mafu This site is about academia, not undergraduate study. Questions about being taught are considered on-topic if they apply to graduate level course, but not really if they are only applicable to undergraduate level.

@JessicaB I believe the exact same situation will occur next semester in the Master's program.

From Wikipedia: «Academia is the internationally recognized establishment of professional scholars and students, usually centered on colleges and universities». Talking about bachelor studies is on topic.

First, you should realize that what the professor intends (hopes) to teach may be different from what he is expected to teach.  There are lots of things that I hope to cover in classes that I often don't get a chance to, and as an instructor you have to make trade offs between covering more breadth versus depth.  This is normal.  What I feel I am "required" to cover depends on the course, and if it is a standard course I usually rely on the official course description, though there is still a lot of leeway.
However, there certainly are course where not covering certain content is unacceptable (e.g., not covering integration by parts in a standard calculus sequence).  Also, at many places regularly running over time by 15 minutes without prior student agreement is not at all acceptable.
If you want something done about it, you should first talk to other students to see if they are of the same opinion as you.  Then you can either try talking to the instructor or the department head, depending on what you feel comfortable with, and preferably with a couple other students.  (As an instructor, I would generally prefer you bring a concern to me first before talking to the chair.)  Particularly if talk to the instructor, you should try to make it a conversation, e.g., "if we don't cover XXX in this course, will this be an issue when I take Class Y?" rather than a list of complaints, although pointing out "some students have another class after this, so they can't stay after without being late for their next" is fine.
Note the department head usually gives faculty the benefit of the doubt, in part because faculty usually get a fair amount of autonomy over their courses.  So if you do have a conversation with the department head, you want to focus on concrete, objective facts as much as possible.  Afterwards, I would expect the department head to have a conversation with the instructor, which may make a difference if the instructor is told that something they are doing is unacceptable.  This happened in at least one class I was in where no one knew what was going on, and then the course it became much more elementary.

I don't mean this in a mean way but ...Just suck it up!  And don't even think about filing a complaint... We don't get to choose the style that our teachers use in the classroom.  It may not fit you but it may fit others just fine.  If you are expecting the professor's lectures to be the sole method of learning you are going to have a very hard time in life in general.  Take what you can from the lectures; augment it with the text books; and do some research of your own on the topics. By the way, what subject is this class you are taking?

I would no longer take your concern up with the professor in question, but rather follow the chain of command and file a complaint. First, keep it informal and talk to the Chair. Ask anyone who has good standing in the class to add their input in the same way. If no progress has been made within a reasonable time frame (let the Chair decide this), then file a formal complaint with the Chair. If it gets worse, go up the chain to the Assistant Dean of your college branch (like College of the Arts). Keep at it until some progress is made. Whatever you do, keep it factual, not emotional.
Good luck.

Administrators will very likely say the professor is permitted to do this if he wants.  There is no grounds for a complaint.

Consistently running  15 minutes over the scheduled class time is cause for complaint. Consistently getting lost in the details and "not covering the day's chapter" are not, because you can read the chapter yourself.

Really? That's kind of a bummer, Anonymous Physicist. I answered the way I did because I know sometimes it's hard to take a complaint from a student seriously. But talking to someone who can at least open the conversation platform, even if the complaint isn't formally taken care of, imo is important. And yes, JeffE one can read out of the book, but from a student's standpoint, if I go to class, I'd better get something out of it.


text:
How far can I go when requesting presentational changes in a review?
First time reviewer for a mathematical journal here.
I'm encountering a lot of little presentational flaws, such as typos and grammatical errors, but also LaTeX problems. It doesn't stop there, I also encounter (what I see as) problems in the structure of the text, for example, a rather important definition is "hidden away" in the text and referenced later, but it could be improved to be a standalone definition.
I don't know how far I should go in my review. Of course I'll point out all typos and grammar issues and require those to be fixed before publication. But can I ask people to improve their LaTeX typesetting? Can I ask them to restructure their text? Can I ask them to change the title in order to match the content better?

A lot of journals "retype" the submitted works and the formatting of the version of the paper that appears in the journal will be different from what the authors submitted initially. I would not point out LaTeX problems in the peer review unless they severely limit the clarity/correctness of the paper.
You probably need to justify the text restructure - if it's going to majorly improve the flow of the paper and highlight certain important features. However, you should balance between "I think it is just better to write it this way" (use this judgment for your own papers) and "Providing the definition of A is important to avoid ambiguity in B" (certainly include in your review).
Since you explicitly added the question about the title change, I would advise applying an even harsher standard on personal taste vs. necessary changes judgment for the title.
Anyway, especially in your first review, I would focus more on the major questions:

Novelty of the scientific contribution
Correctness of the proofs
Proper coverage of the previous work
Justification by numerical results and visualization (if applicable)

Pointing out typos and grammar mistakes is also important, but that should probably constitute the minor part of your review.


text:
Can I talk about articles I'm refereeing?
For the first time, I've been asked to referee an article for a journal, and a prestigious one. I work in Maths, so the article has been online as a preprint on arXiv for some time, and it was on the top of my reading list anyways. I feel very confident that I can referee the article, that's not the problem. I understand it well, I don't have a conflict of interests.
But I don't know how to handle my refereeing work socially. Can I talk about it? When my office mate asks me "I've noticed you are reading this article very carefully and you're taking a lot of notes.", what can I say? Is it ok to say that I'm refereeing the article? Can I name the journal or the editor, if the conversation continues?
I'm thinking about the article a lot, so I'll inevitably talk about its contents often with my colleagues. Can I bring up my task as a referee? If I should hide it, what are some recommendations to do it?
I also happen to know another referee of the article. Is it appropriate to bring the review process up in a conversation?
And the killer aspect: If I meet the author on a conference, is it acceptable to tell them that I was a referee?

In short, I want to know what the appropriate boundaries are when discussing my refereeing work with others.

Generally, no, you don't talk about it. Saying it is an article you are refereeing should pretty much end the conversation right there if your colleague is at all aware of the ethos of refereeing.

If the article is available some other way, say on-line, then you can talk about the article.  But still you would not mention that you are refereeing it.  Another point:   I would say that two referees should work independently.

@CodesInChaos, yes, as is usual in my field. I'll clarify the question.

You should stop talking about the content of refereed papers, especially if you do it often.

@AaronBrick, I know the authors, but their name is also on the article. In quite a few fields (Maths, Computer Science), authors are visible to the referees, while the referees stay hidden.

"If I meet the author on a conference, is it acceptable to tell them that I was a referee?" Given that there's some argument against doing so, let me ask: what possible benefit would such an action bring to anyone?

@GregMartin, I'm not expecting any benefits, I just want to talk to people without having to keep secrets.

There are different confidentiality requirements involved, some to protect the authors, some to protect the referees.
A) As a referee, you absolutely must not reveal the content of an article you are refereeing to others. In many cases, the paper will be available on the arXiv anyway, and you can speak about the contents of the arXiv preprint, even if you are refereeing the paper, but not about anything you couldn't have learned outside of the refereeing process.
R) It is not customary to reveal oneself as a referee of a specific paper, but there is no strong consensus on how strict this should be handled. It is quite certainly ok to mention that one is refereeing for a specific journal (many people list the journals they have refereed for in their CV).
To your detailed questions:

When discussing the article, do not mention that you are refereeing it. Be careful not to mention details exclusive to the submitted version and absent from the preprint.
When ask by your office mate, it is fine to say that you are refereeing. They should not pry for details. If they know which article you are refereeing, do not mention the journal. If not, you can mention the journal. Better not name the editor.
As mentioned in the comments, it is typically better if referee reports are independent. Do not discuss an ongoing referee report with your co-referees.
Some people do reveal themselves as referees to authors. In general, I would advise against it though.

I would suggest that remembering what you learned from a preprint and what you learned from a referee version is just too hard to keep track of. Don't volunteer information, and if the paper comes up in normal discussion you can ask, "What's that paper about?" and go from there.

"Be careful not to mention details exclusive to the submitted version and absent from the preprint." The difficulty in keeping those straight on the fly suggests it may be better to just avoid discussing it at all until it's published.

What's wrong with revealing yourself as a referee to the authors?

First, it's important to distinguish two cases: The case where the work under review is already publicly available as a preprint (which seems to apply here), and the case where it isn't. In the latter case, the work under review needs to be handled with absolute confidentiality. In the former case, things are less clear.
I will answer your questions for the case I feel confident about: a non-publicly-available submission in software engineering. For a publicly available submission, adequate answers may be less (but not more) conservative.

Is it ok to say that I'm refereeing the article? [...] Can I bring up my task as a referee? If I should hide it, what are some recommendations to do it?

It's OK to say you're reviewing "an article" or "the article on my desk". It's not OK to disclose the title or author name.

Can I name the journal or the editor [...]?

Yes. The information that someone has been reviewing for a specific journal is routinely mentioned in CVs, and the list of editors of a specific journal is normally publicly available, too.

I also happen to know another referee of the article. Is it appropriate to bring the review process up in a conversation?

Yes, but only after both of you have submitted their reviews, and if the conversation involves no additional persons other than the referee.

And the killer aspect: If I meet the author on a conference, is it acceptable to tell them that I was a referee?

I've occassionally seen cases where reviewers revealed their identities even within their review, which effectively amounts to the same situation as in your question. However, in fact, this seems to be a controversial question without a universally accepted answer.

I disagree about the conversation with the other referee. It's already suspicious that the OP happens to know another referee. How could that happen if either sticks to your other rules?

@Walter, yes, I was concerned as well. In this case, it happened because some people sometimes forward emails without cutting off the previous conversation.

In that case, pretend that you do not know the other referee.

You're right. In my field, you sometimes get to know the identities of the other reviewers, but only after submitting the review. In this case, the independence of the reviews is not at stake.

The "meeting author at conference" thing - I think it's a different situation while the article is under review, or afterwards. I've had reviewers wait until after the article is accepted, then reveal themselves and congratulate me on it.

My answer is going to differ from the comments currently left.
Ethically, there's a certain reserve you need to have around the articles you are reviewing. You certainly can't share the manuscript.
But what you are talking about is coffee break conversation. I see no issue in saying that you are reviewing an interesting manuscript, on subject X. You should not revealed the authors' names, but you can certainly talk about it. Reviewing is not a secret mission.
You should not however discuss it with the other referee, as you don't want to influence each other.
As for revealing your identity to the authors, I personally see no problem with it, especially if you had a positive review. Be careful, however, as if their article got rejected, they might not like you very much...

Excellent answer! I may add that I have myself meddled a bit with keeping the identity of an article I'm refereeing secret and regretted it. It can lead to all sorts of unwanted situations. Don't even consider this. Not now, not for another paper, never.

You have to be really careful what you discuss in "coffee break" conversation doesn't reveal something provided in confidence.  You don't want to, for instance, spur a colleague into pursuing similar research just because they heard about this paper.

Revealing yourself to the authors can cause problems. For example, will they think that you're trying to say, "I did you a favour by positively reviewing your article: maybe you could do the same for me, some day?" Ultimately, if you don't think you'll gain anything from revealing yourself to the authors, why do it? And if you do think you'll gain something, that seems unethical.

@FredDouglis I agree that you don't want to reveal secrets in coffee break convo, but the idea you suggest is a bit intense. Unless your colleague can create an article out of thin air, the article you're reviewing will already be published. So no plagiarism. And if it suggest new areas of research for colleagues, why not?

@DavidRicherby Maybe, this is a good point. But there could be new collaborations emerging. It might a be field related thing. Biologists like me are pretty casual ppl.

@Emilie, the article might be rejected, or it might be accepted subject to revisions that could take even a year or longer to accomplish.  In the meantime your coffee klatch has a head start.  They might not do the same thing, especially if the level of detail is minimal, but they're not entitled to any leakage at all.   ... I have certainly heard innuendo and rumors about cases where someone thinks a reviewer of their article stole their idea.  Telling someone else about the idea when you're the reviewer is no different.

@DavidRicherby, certainly the question about revealing being a reviewer has been contentious.  But I know people who say "reviewed by John Doe" in public comments because they feel they shouldn't say anything under the cloak of anonymity they wouldn't say publicly.  I think it is their choice and not unethical to do so.  I don't think anyone expects quid pro quo.

@FredDouglis but you would need to provide a lot of details for a person that is not a reviewer to steal an idea. That's certainly not what my answer implied.

To steal the idea directly, yes.  To do something competing with it, not necessarily.  I think even knowing the title of a confidential submission could reveal a direction that an unethical party could use (even subconsciously, not intentionally) to spur, say, a new project.  I'm sure this depends in part on the field and the bar to entry for a new project.

So, yes, I would say that reviewing is a secret mission.

@FredDouglis then I think our views on this are just irreconcilable! ;)