text:
When applying to grad school, where should I discuss my medical issues that led to poor grades during my first two years?
I graduated this December from a major public university with a major in social services. I received a 3.02. I have about four Ws on my transcript and two FS, and quite a few Cs. Two semesters in my early years of school I did very poorly due to a medical issue I was dealing with. When you look at my past 4 semesters though I have done quite well and clearly have an upward trajectory of increasing my gpa each year. Would you write an extra statement to the admissions team stating why you received those bad grades those 2 semesters or put it in your personal statement of intent....or just let it slide and hope for the best. I was dealing with extreme dizziness and neurological symptoms due to undiagnosed hypothyroidism at the time.
Other than that I have multiple internships, practicum experiences, and volunteer work, and will be receiving great letters of recommendation. I am applying to a Counseling Master's Program and do believe this will help a lot!

Is this for the US or elsewhere?

Welcome to Academia.SE. We don't allow multiple, distinct questions per post, so I removed your second question -- feel free to repost it separately. As for the remaining question -- you may want to check out these related posts: Can I recover after a really bad first year? or 3.8 GPA, but 3 Fs and 1 D on transcript.

Medical issues, especially during your earlier years, are worth explaining in your SOP BUT it's not worth making an extra statement/essay.  You don't want to be overdramatic with it, rather maybe a line or two in the sense of the whole SOP/application.  GPA is a bit low, but you have a strong upward trend, plus all the issues were in your earlier years so that will definitely help.
In addition, are any of your recommenders aware of this?  In addition to adding an again, VERY small addendum addressing this, your recommenders could also address it as well, making a small addendum in their letters saying the C's/F's/W's earlier on in your undergraduate are in no way a reflection of your ability to succeed in a graduate program or conduct research.
Remember that GPA is only one factor.  Your experiences as well as your later years and, most importantly, your letters of recommendation all have a significant part of your application package as well.

But, don't make it the focus of the SoP. Make it a sentence or even just a phrase. The SoP should be forward looking about your future plans and goals, not the past.


text:
First year Math PhD student; My problem solving skill has been completely atrophied and continues to decline
I'm a first year PhD student in mathematics and I'm in a pretty bad spot.
Over the last year or so of undergrad and first semester of grad school, I've completely atrophied my problem solving skill. At some point I became more comfortable with looking up a solution than trying to solve it myself. At this point my first instinct is to google something instead of trying to solve something. I need to fix this; it's already been affecting my performance and well being across the board. I'm almost instinctually aversive to trying to solve a problem by myself at this point. I feel like I've lost the ability to actually do math. I initially justified it by saying that my interest in math stems from my interest in the theory, and that I'm not particularly interested in problem solving. It's clear now that that was just cognitive dissonance. I need to fix this.
I know what the obvious answer is- don't look stuff up. And try to do problems on my own. Practice, practice, practice.
But I feel like it's not so simple either. I'm doing graduate level math after all. I managed to get into a fairly top level, rigorous program. I have performed well enough in the past that I managed to place ahead of my peers, and am doing relatively advanced courses (after all, I wouldn't have resorted to looking up stuff if it wasn't working well for me, until recently). As such, it seems like I already need a solid, strong problem solving capability in order to deal with my classes, which are quite demanding. So when I'm faced with HW or other problems, I'm unable to solve most of the problems even if I try really hard, because my problem solving skill is just so bad at this point, and I have to resort to looking things up once more. This further worsens my skill and on and on. It's a negative feedback loop. And I'm struggling to break out of it. I wanted advice on how to escape this loop especially. The idea of simply not looking stuff up is sound, but it's hard to follow through when I have only a finite amount of time before I have to stop thinking and submit my answers, or when I simply don't possess the capability anymore to try and solve the problem.
These days the idea of solving a graduate level HW set seems impossible to me, and I'm just incredibly lucky graduate level courses tend not to have exams. It's reached the point where it's threatening my future in my PhD program so I really do need to fix it. Googling my way through life isn't possible (or desirable either). I really am desperate now.
I feel like a lost cause at this point, like the damage has already been done to me, and I can't really fix it without going back to undergrad or something.
I was just hoping for concrete advice and from people who have had similar experiences, and what I should do.
Clarifications:

I am referring to problems/solutions in my graduate courses. The research portion of my PhD has not started yet.
My advisor and I are not particularly close (only interacted a few times so far due to the pandemic), so my awkward attempt to bring it up with him didn't really go anywhere.

Some clarifications have been edited into the post; the rest of this conversation has been moved to chat. Please do not post answers in the comments. Hint: if you find yourself adding five consecutive comments, it probably shouldn't be a comment.

I think it’s not a coincidence that the timing of this decline matches up with the pandemic.  A lot of people are really struggling right now, I feel like I can’t do math as well as I could a year ago.  In this post it sounds like you’re being really hard on yourself.  Counterintuitively I think a big part of what might help is being more compassionate with yourself.  It’s ok that you’re struggling, and it’s ok to just not solve some of the problems.  Research math mostly involves failing to solve problems most of the time, so it’s really ok to just not answer some of the questions and get used to that feeling and be kind to yourself because they’re hard problems.  You can always come back to those problems next year.  I guess what I’m saying is that you also want to develop the skill of giving up on a problems as well as the skill of solving them.  The former is perhaps more valuable in research than the latter.

This answer cannot be emphasized more. The pandemic is, among others, also a large-scale mental health crisis. Many universities have started to recognize that and give students additional retake options for failed classes.

"you also want to develop the skill of giving up on a problems as well as the skill of solving them. The former is perhaps more valuable in research than the latter." - excellent point, +1.

I appreciate the value in what you're saying and you're probably right to some degree. But I feel obliged to mention that all of this is with respect to regular coursework; I haven't gotten to research yet. While research math involves a lot of failing I imagine regular coursework is designed to be solvable.
But still, thank you for your advice.

The point of these first few years of grad school is preparing you for research.  Part of that preparation is learning to be ok with not solving problems (even solvable ones!).  I don’t design graduate homework with the expectation that students should be able to solve every problem. (I want students to be able to solve most of them, and I don’t want to assign problems no one gets, but it’s normal for a problem or two to stump each student each week.)

That's fair. Thanks for your advice!

+1 I really like this answer. I somehow relate it to my own field, software development. Building software involves TONS of debugging; those bugs can be considered tons of failures, as well. Remember the path of success is paved with failures.

Let me also mention that these problems under normal circumstances are tackled my several people at a time. The problems in a grad course are understood to be too difficult to tackle solo in a human amount of time. The pandemic made workin together harder. Next time, invite another student to a zoom meeting where you share a whiteboard and try to work through a problem. This will be waaaayyyyy more fulfilling than filling in the details of someone else’s notes or a SE/MO post. I’m also having a hard time in my second year right now. We got this  though :)

@NoahSnyder what a wonderful answer! (I joined this community just so I could upvote the answer).

@Atrophied_Skills It is important to note that sometimes it is not really your problem solving skill that is gone, but rather that the state of your mental health may prevent you from using your skills. Surely, from a practical point of view, these two things are the same, but I feel like it is an important distinction to make: your skills are not really gone, but may not be immediately accessible at the moment. I hope things are looking better for you. Best,

Say what you want, but the pandemic was my excuse to stay home and solve problems even more than before, I don't think it's a valid reason.

@Rainb: Maybe not everyone is the same, and no one put you in charge of what reasons are "valid" or not.  That's a mean-spirited and uninformed comment, I'd suggest deleting it.

Let me add my perspective on the first two points in the answer of Spark.

Some students, and I was one, reach the limit of their natural "ability" in math early on, and others later. Before you reach that limit things seem fairly obvious and you can do math without a lot of hard work. But once you reach that limit only really hard work will get you to the required insights. It is possible to do that, as I did, but as soon as I started undergraduate studies I had to work hard to advance. My sister, on the other hand, hit the wall later and didn't really recover from it. But in her early life it was all pretty easy.

The solution for me was to do more exercises, even if I had to buy workbooks in order to find them. I once graphed hundreds of rational functions (by hand) using derivative information and developed deep insight into the behavior of real functions in doing so. But I had to learn not to depend on "ability" to get the job done.

You may have reached a point of burnout as I did early on in grad school. This is pretty natural if everything up to now has been very intense. Your brain, and maybe your body generally, need a break of some kind. I didn't get over it until I changed institutions and found a more supportive environment. But I also learned to take breaks - especially aerobic breaks, so that my mind was fresh when I attacked a new problem.

I don't know if either of these actually resonates with you or not. But it is probably worth taking a bit of time (a time-out) to look at where you are what underlying causes there might be for your block. A professional counsellor (perhaps at the university) might be able to give you advice fairly quickly. Small changes might be all that is needed.
I don't have more to add to Spark's last points, but they resonate with me also. Good advice there.

Your #1 sounds like the introduction Isaac Asimov's essay collection View From a Height (I think this is the correct book), but I have to leave now and thus don't have time to look for my copy for more specifics. But I recall it was about how Asimov found all math easy and trivial and obvious until differential calculus, when the cracks began, and then with integral calculus (2nd semester U.S. based calculus) he hit a wall that he never passed, and from then on he regarded math as an arena in which he could only roam around as long as he stayed on the lower side of integral calculus.

I got back home a few minutes ago, looked for the Asimov comment I was thinking of, and found it as the italicized introductory comments to Part 3. Mathematics in his 1969 book Opus 100 (pp. 89-91 in my 1969 Dell Publishing paperback version; I think pp. 87-90 in the 1969 Houghton Mifflin hardback version). Unfortunately, the passage does not seem to be on the internet anywhere.

+1 for your first point. The later you hit that wall, the more it hurts and the harder it is to recover.

@JS Lavertu: Because I apparently had nothing better to do, I've posted the Asimov comments, which I previously mentioned, as an answer to Success in maths (soft question).

The wall thing needs to be bought up more with students who find math easy. I remember hitting it in first-year university calculus. I had no idea the wall was coming and it sucked. I wish someone had told me.

The wall is not just a Math thing.  I never got to the point in academia where I hit the math wall (Community College only).  But high school (IB program) was the first time I struggled with any school coursework whatsoever beyond just being bored.  It didn't help that my middle school history classes were non-existent.  So I almost flunked History 3 years in a row in high school.  If you skate by not developing any actual problem solving skills, when you finally get to the point where you need them, they've stopped teaching those skills.

Humans don't have natural math ability. We don't even think about linear sequence of numbers with out rigorous reinforcement/ rote memorization very early on.  Our natural state is to ignore physical quantities and think in terms of logarithmic amounts. For many societies its even simpler than than (one, two, many).  Our brains aren't even equipped to recognize the exact amount of more than 5 objects.  The "naturally talented student" is a myth.  Their environment shaped them entirely.  Picking up on math concepts is one part random, one part teacher, and one part previous life experience.

There are a few things that might be happening:

You are in a grad program, which is probably presenting you with more challenging problems. So - problems you are encountering might be actually more difficult than problems you encountered in your undergrad studies.

Your brain is tired. Stress of starting a PhD program; from a global pandemic; from knowing you are in a top program and feeling you're not up to snuff; from failing. Let go of these. This is clearly easier said than done, but perhaps finding comfort with friends and family, or talking to a professional (no shame in that at all! This is a stressful time).

You are giving yourself a crutch of Googling stuff, which is super tempting. Try to avoid that as much as you can, and even start by solving the basics first as was suggested by others here.

One of the big differences between grad research and undergrad studies is that you don't know whether an answer exists. In an undergrad assignment, you know that there's a solution, which is giving you some comfort that if you dig enough you'll find the solution. This is definitely not the case for research problems, where your problem may have no solution (or one that's way beyond your skill level).

Good luck!

+1 for the uncertainty on the existence of an answer. What's worse, sometimes one isn't even sure about what the question actually is, and whether it is relevant.

I think your skills might not have atrophied as much as you think and you simply haven't adjusted your expectations!
It's difficult to diagnose the problem from afar but there might be the following vicious cycle at play: You start working on a problem with the attitude of "I am good at math. And I can do any math problem thrown at me!". But now because those problems are much harder you struggle much more compared to your times as an undergraduate. This generates enormous frustration ("I should be able to do this!! Why can't I do this??") which in turn makes it much harder to solve the actual problem.
Because solving hard math problem requires creativity and very high focus you need to be in a somewhat relaxed and positive state of mind. In order to achieve that I'd advise you to give yourself much more credit for partial progress. As an undergraduate you probably didn't give yourself any credit for just doing run of the mill homework. Maybe if you got 100/100 on every single problem set you felt a little bit proud. But below that you probably just didn't consider solving homework problems as an achievement. Now in grad school game is a different one!
The way to break our of your current state, is not to beat yourself up and try harder but give yourself positive feedback for much smaller incremental progress than you used to. Getting started with even understanding exactly what the problem is used to be "worthless" to you ("everyone can do this") whereas now it would equate to a very productive afternoon that you should feel proud and accomplished.

Here are some suggestions for both your courses and your future life as a researcher. These will reflect my own taste and approach, so may or may not be relevant to you. In particular, I think this applies to some areas of mathematics much more than to others. Some of the points below will be corollaries of the more general points preceding them:

Instead of thinking of your job as solving problems, think of it as understanding "what is going on". In many cases at the level of graduate courses this will, in fact, be "all" it will take to solve the homework exercises (which is not to say that this is a small step). In research this is also often the most important part. Rediscover that understanding what is going on is something only you can do, and that looking up can only help so much with this. When we write papers, we often create an illusion: namely that at some point (or at several points) we had a brilliant flash of problem solving genius. In reality what happens much more often is that we grope our way to the final polished solution by way of many concrete examples, special cases, iterations of abstraction, etc., ultimately just understanding better and better "what is really going on". The next points are just going to be concrete elaborations on this general attitude.
Compute concrete examples, unprompted. Don't delay this until you have been given concrete exercises to solve, start doing it when you learn the theory. As soon as you see a definition, come up with examples and non-examples for the concept. As soon as you read a theorem statement, try to disprove it before continuing to read the proof; work out and verify the statement in concrete examples; if you start out immediately believing the statement, try dropping some of the hypotheses and see if you still believe it; now find counterexamples to the versions with hypotheses omitted; now actually try to prove the result. You will discover (to your huge delight, I promise) that by the time you have done all of the above, you will often actually just be able to prove the theorem. Even better, you might get a sense of how one would actually discover the statement one one's own. That is always the ultimate goal in learning a new theory. And you will be able to transfer all these strategies to your homework.
Try, whenever possible, to ignore time pressure, and actually to ignore time. Just set out to get to the bottom of things.
If you can find a suitable colleague, try explaining what you have learned to them. When you prepare such a lesson, anticipate the questions, starting with the most naive ones. If you don't have a suitable colleague for this, prepare such a talk anyway. What this will do is it will make obvious to yourself the various gaps that you still have in your understanding that you were not aware of. Often when trying to get "to the bottom of things", one of the big obstacles is seeing where "the bottom" is. You get used, so to speak, to floating at a particular depth, and just by force of habit start thinking that this is where you are supposed to be.

Excellent advice!  Especially the first point that many people claw their way forward incrementally, but then publish a "revised" history that shows how to get there with smooth, clean leaps.

If you were able to intuitively solve problems up until now you then probably never developed a systematic approach to problem solving. Now when your intuitive approach fails, you have nothing to fall back on. The good news is that you can learn a systematic approach to problem solving. Then you just have to remember to apply your systematic approach instead of panicking (this can actually be quite hard, from my experience).
You may even recall other people using this kind of strategy while you "just solved" things.

Read over the whole question once.
Organize what information you're given--I recommend copying this off onto a second piece of paper, it really helps focus you.
Make sure you understand what you're being asked to find or show. If it's a multi-part question, focus on one part at a time.
Write down any definitions or ideas that might connect what you're given to what you're asked to find or show. Re-familiarizing yourself with earlier (undergraduate) classes will be helpful here!
Note any techniques that might help you (perhaps it seems like a proof by induction may be helpful, perhaps what you're being asked for is a change over time so some calculus might be useful, etc.).
If you still have no ideas, try either... a) Forming a simpler version of the problem. b) Trying a few sample cases to try and understand what is happening. c) Drawing a picture. d) Pretending that you are explaining the problem to someone else, using full sentences, and adding in more detail until the problem is clear.

This previous question about how to get better at proofs might also be useful for you. There are several very good answers that offer structured approaches to proofs.
Also, if you can find a bit of time (it's hard, I know), it can be useful to go back and find the boundary where your intuition was no longer enough, and start working at that boundary. Find a few problems that were difficult but doable and practice solving them using deliberate techniques...then see if you can move that boundary a little bit.
Oh, and one other thing. You may have to change your study skills, too. Or at least, I did. I never memorized things because I found it easier to learn the general ideas and then piece the specifics back together from principles when needed. But at the point where my intuition started failing I wasn't able to do that, I had to start actually studying the hard way using note cards and spaced repetition software and that kind of thing (it was awful, haha).
(Side note, I agree with others re: pandemic is hard and probably making things worse.)

Just to add to the great advice already given.
Please consider consulting a psychiatrist to make sure if there is a physiological component of your struggle, it is dealt with appropriately. Sometimes we forget that the brain is an organ and it needs proper nourishment and irrigation. A good psychiatrist has the right tools to assess whether someone needs treatment, and it could really help. I write from personal experience - I am not a mathematician.

This was my first reaction from reading the "tone" of the OP.

How much sleep are you getting?
What other stress are you under? Financial, relationship, etc.?
Are you doing anything that is sapping your intellectual strength? Drinking, video game binging, porn, etc.?
Are you keeping up some measure of exercise? Eating reasonably healthy?
Mental sharpness is affected by a lot of things. These are a few basics to rule out before looking deeper.

I would also state the converse, that if you struggle with many of these surface behaviours, it is likely indicative of a deeper psychological issue that needs to be addressed. (ie. they are coping mechanisms, what are you trying to cope with?)

A few things that have helped me in similar situations:

Write down several problems to try (on paper), turn off your phone and computer, and work for an hour. If you're staring at a blank page for an hour, pick easier problems from earlier in the course. The goal is to strengthen your Sitzfleisch, a mathematician's most important muscle.
If you're still stuck on some problems after the hour is up, talk to someone! Your professors have office hours -- tell them what you've tried and where you're stuck. Nowadays, you'll have to turn on your computer to go to office hours, but don't look up anything about the problems before going to office hours. The point is that you want to practice formulating and asking questions on your own.
Reach out to other grad students and work on homework with them. Be clear about your goals to not look things up right away. Working with others is a good way to keep yourself accountable. This is also good practice for collaborating on projects once you start research.

Regarding the last point -- it can be intimidating to ask to work with others. You may worry that they all know what they're doing, and that they will all see how hopelessly lost you are. However, being brave enough to feel stupid is an important part of doing research. And who knows if your peers actually know what they're doing? If they do, you can learn a lot from them, and if they don't, then you can all figure it out together!

Ask your self:

Do I like doing math?

There's no rule that a person will always enjoy doing what they are good at. It's possible that you have mathematical skills, but you don't actually enjoy doing math.
Ask yourself why you enrolled in this program; was it to pursue passion, or to pursue a specific career, or was it simply the path of least resistance?
Other answers point to several effects that could cause a temporary, reversible lack of interest/motivation (e.g. pandemic, undetected depression...) and these would likely have a broad impact over many aspects of life. So if your ability to enjoy anything has atrophied, then look for a temporary, reversible effect and if possible seek some counseling or professional assistance.
However, if it seems to be specifically mathematics that's lost it's shine, then consider some significant courses of action sooner, rather than later:

Look into a more applied field of mathematics like engineering, physics, some aspects of molecular biology or social sciences and see if these spark a new interest in wanting to solve problems. Maybe it's simply that you are more of a goal oriented person and when the solution has a practical use it feels more compelling.

If that's not effective, then consider that you've discovered that Math just isn't interesting to you. Maybe you simply don't like it any more. In that case you may have some decisions to make.

For comparison, here's how some people feel about mathematical problem solving:

Addiction to Math Stack Exchange
Can Math.SE be addictive?
Am I the only one getting addicted to this site? How do you manage time doing other things?

Hah, I had a different situation, but it may be useful to you.
Several years ago, I was able to consistently solve 4/6 problems at any IMO problemset.
Then happened my undergraduate studies and this horrible phase of mathematics education where I didn't really need to solve math problems. You learn the method for the exam problems, solve it, forget it and go on. I never did much homework, nor did I take any advanced courses.
I switched universities owing to the Bologna Accord, and then started taking serious courses. And I really found myself worse than I remembered, not able to really solve the homework in advanced graduate courses.
Then it was painful for a while, to be honest. I felt like my mental skills have declined.
But, I kind of slowly got my brain back once I started spending >10h/week just trying to solve problems, just like in high school. Ideas just started appearing more often after the first semester.
The point: it takes consistent practice to be OK at anything.
And you need grit; you won't get any returns in a few weeks only.

source: Stack Exchange

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I believe I have a clever idea/tool that should be widely adopted by the research community. How to interpret a lukewarm response?
Related to this question, except I do not believe (and have not claimed) that I have solved an open problem, famous or otherwise.
I came up with an idea (specifically, how to pronounce numbers in bases that are a power of two) that I think is useful for the research community, for educators, and in recreational math.
I have seen it mostly ignored and poorly understood. Occasionally it has been ridiculed and called 'pure crankery', 'Doctor Seuss names', 'pure bullsh*t' without the asterisk, downvoted, and even in a some rare cases deleted on internet answers sites. But about three (out of about a hundred) maths and computer professors have said it is 'valid', 'very clever, or 'works to some extent' (all on Quora).
How do I interpret this? How to find out whether I am a crank? I am not aiming to convince others that I am not a crank because only others can judge whether I am a crank or not. I don't want to convince people that I am not a crank if I actually am one, because that would mean I would be more likely to stay deluded, if I am deluded.
How should I respond to those that refuse to discuss the idea on the ground that it is crankery? What are they thinking?

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I removed some arguments in the comments; please note our code of conduct. I also rolled this question back to an earlier version -- the question has already gone through being closed and reopened, so let us not wildly deviate from the version that the community voted to accept.

What is it you hope to accomplish, global adoption of your idea?

A lukewarm response would mean that either the idea is not interesting or useful to the intended audience. You should try to judge whether the idea is intrinsically interesting (the question certainly indicates that you feel so) and whether you are approaching an appropriate audience using an appropriate medium.
It certainly seems that you are pushing the idea too hard when you face a lot of indifference and still continue to reach out to individual professors. It is evident that they aren't interested in discussing it, and you should respect that. Maybe the proposed method has value in a different setting. Not every tool that is/could be useful to a researcher is published in scientific literature or discussed on academic fora. Seek out other media, gauge interest and try to identify if there is a group that is interested in/benefits from the idea as you envisage them to.
If you don't find such a group, record the method somewhere, preferably on an open platform and simply leave it until somebody that finds it useful comes along. If the idea is ahead of its time, then you should wait for somebody visionary enough to come across it. If you feel that the idea can do with more refinement, keep working at it and then try exhibiting it once you find significant improvement. Or if you feel it can be monetized and are interested in that, explore intellectual property options.
The bottomline is, irrespective of the true worth of an idea, it is counter-productive to force people to take note of it.

EDIT: Since articles related to the idea/tool have recently been shared by the OP, I am adding a few thoughts specific to the present situation. I hope that these will help clarify the difference between a research submission and an invention.
At the outset, the idea is (to me) clever, of possible interest to hobbyists and recreational number crunchers, and may have some potential contributions to specific fields (linguistics). There is no indication of crankery. As such, a case may be made that this idea (once established as novel) could be converted into a research submission. To make this case, the following crucial points would need to be addressed:

Identification of a target group/domain which would be benefitted by this work.
A clear and emphatic justification of why there is a need to undertake this effort. Presently, this is lacking. There must be a concrete use-case or demonstration of value, beyond a general statement of it being interesting or 'worth exploring'. Without this, the academic reader would conclude that insufficient background study and thought has gone into this idea. The onus of establishing worth through objective arguments lies on the author of the idea, not on the reader.
A discussion of why this has not been addressed so far (i.e. did nobody think of it or was it not worth the effort), and the related work that has already been done in the field. This may indeed require access to some academic literature, but is necessary. Hopefully OP has found some useful references in the linked answers.
A clear statement of what benefit the proposed tool gives. Is it to make teaching easy (in that case, look for a pedagogical audience)? Is it to enhance linguistic/numerical abilities (look for a linguistic audience)? It is going to make some computational process more efficient or unambiguous (go to computer scientists)? Is it going to add to how we deal with number systems (seek out mathematicians)?
Related to 4., demonstrate (ideally quantitatively) that the tool achieves this objective in comparison to the existing procedure, and therefore is worth consideration.

If these can be addressed, the response from academicians may be warmer. Personally, I think the blog format is well-suited and is quite engaging for these ideas.

Could you provide some examples to illustrate your points? I'm wondering what sort of size document you are envisaging for example and just how formal the language would have to be.

@MatthewChristopherBartsh : The primary form of scientific communication in many fields is a scientific journal. Each journal has its own style guide that specifies these points (they can vary significantly). As example, see this guide (selected because of its reputation and because you won't be blocked by paywalls): https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/formatting-guide

@MatthewChristopherBartsh I should also mention that there are some journals which cater specifically to recreational math. You'll be able to find them quite easily on Google.

Should I send a link to an article on my blog to the journal?

I still don't understand why it makes a difference in what context an idea is encountered. The idea should be judged on its own merits, regardless who proposes it, or where, in my opinion. 2. What do you mean by, 'Personally, I think the blog format is well-suited and is quite engaging for these ideas.' ?

It's as if you are saying that academics judge even the shortest, simplest book by its cover, or which book shop it is in.

No. Ideas are plentiful and incredibly cheap, this is often hard to swallow. For an idea to stand out, it's context and presentation very much matter. This is true in most spheres of human activity. 2. I mean that I found the blog articles quite engaging and interesting. I'm not sure that converting them to a journal article is worth the effort, but that's only my opinion.

I don't know why you harp on length so much, where did I or anyone else suggest that you need to write longer articles? Everyone I'd trying to tell you about increasing rigour, placing the idea in context, identifying clearly where it is useful and proving it.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

There is nothing interesting linguistically here.

@AppliedAcademic, the wording "either the idea is not interesting or useful" is ambiguously unparallel. If you're starting with "either the idea is not interesting," then what follows should be "or [subject] [predicate]." Do you mean "the idea is either not interesting or not useful" (at least one adjective doesn't apply) or "the idea is neither interesting nor useful" (both adjectives don't apply)?

If I draw a drawing on a piece of paper and show it to some friends, that won’t make me a crank despite the fact that I have zero talent in drawing. But if I start claiming my drawing is an important work and should be published or sold or talked about, then I am a crank. The difference is in having a realistic view of the significance of what you’ve done.
Your idea is “valid” and can be reasonably described as “clever”. It is a cute idea, in the same way that I thought it was cute one day many years ago when I discovered I can count all the way to 1023 using my fingers instead of 10 if I make use of binary representations. But your idea is not an idea in math — maybe in math education or in the general area (that doesn’t have a proper name because there is little need for one) of math terminology/notation. And, like my idea at the time, it solves a problem that I don’t think is a real problem anybody has: there just aren’t enough people with a need to extensively communicate numbers in base two by reading them out loud.

What does it mean when on the Internet most academics ignore your idea, and a few say you are a crank and a few say your idea is valid?

It means your idea is technically valid but not as interesting as you think it is.

How do should I respond to those that refuse to discuss the idea on the ground that it is crankery?

You should not respond in any way but leave those people in peace. People have no obligation to discuss your idea, and if they don’t want to discuss it then it means they don’t think it is interesting enough to discuss. Find someone else who does, or find a better idea that people will be more impressed by.

I was once told that in some cultures the fingers have an ordinal, not cardinal sense. So, if you want to signal the barman to bring you one beer, hold up your pinky. But if you hold up your index finger you get four. I told this to a group of students once and was asked by a wise--guy "How do you ask for three?". Not my proudest moment as a professor, but I did demonstrate.

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

"when I discovered I can count all the way to 1023 using my fingers instead of 10 if I make use of binary representations... And, like my idea at the time, it solves a problem that I don’t think is a real problem anybody has" The scientists who invented computers would probably disagree. There's a reason why computers store numbers in binary format, after all.

This answer and Stephen McKean's answer combined would be a very good answer. +1

@nick012000 there’s a reason why humans count in base 10, after all.

@justhalf thanks. Stephen McKean’s answer is already very good with no help from my answer.

+1 OP solved a problem which is simply not a problem for virtually all people, and has a hard time accepting it. That's all there is to it. People don't need to care about anyones ideas.

@Buffy that same wise--guy would have asked what 4 was in the binary way of counting with your fingers.

In my opinion, "Dr. Seuss names" and other epithets you get don't contradict statements like "it's valid" or "clever". If I understand your idea correctly, you basically propose to introduce alternative number names, such as "shi" for what I'd pronounce as "sixty-four", which provides some potential benefits.
Academics would ignore this proposal because it's simply outside the domain of academic research. For me, introducing "shi" as an alternative for "sixty-four" is like proposing Dvorak (or other alternative) keyboard layout instead of the usual QWERTY.
You can do it, and you can argue why it is superior in your opinion, but what kind of response do you expect? Some people would like your idea, others would not. I personally can't force myself to use "kibibytes" and "mebibytes" even though they are kind of established.
Even if you manage to prove that your method is "better" according to some well-defined criterion, I think it is still mostly a political and cultural matter, and should be treated as such, rather than a part of an academic discourse.

+1 but what on earth is a kibibyte?!

1.How does 'pure bullsh*t' not contradict 'it's valid', 'it's very clever', and 'it works to some extent'? 2.There is pedagogical research, and psychological research. There's also linguistics, history of counting systems, and that's off the top of my head.3.How is it a political matter? 4.How is it a cultural matter?5.Your one valid point in my opinion: it is like proposing Dvorak etc. Was that ridiculed, sworn at, called crankery, and deleted and did anyone refuse to discuss it on the ground that it was crankery. If not then what is your point here precisely?

This box is too small, sorry. "Pedagogical & psychological research" is too general to talk about. If you write a scientific paper, it will be reviewed, and you'll receive more specific feedback rather than "bullsh*t". It's political/cultural matter because I am not switching to Dvorak regardless of it's benefits, and I can both recognize it's efficient and call enforcing it 'crankery' due to other (non-scienific) reasons I might have. Likewise, I might recognize ingenuity of your system and oppose its adoption for this or that reason.

@rg_software 1."Pedagogical & psychological research" is too general to talk about." What do you mean? They are relevant parts of academia. 2. Writing a scientific paper isn't enough, surely? It must be published by a recognized journal surely? Otherwise it will likely not even get read let alone be reviewed. 3. Who said anything about enforcement? On the contrary. I have always maintained that there will always be a place for the current predominant method of zip code style pronunciation, just as there is in base ten, for zip codes, and other codes, and telephone numbers and so on.

When we discuss 'research', we usually don't discuss 'research in general', we analyze a specific work (paper). Your proposal is not 'research' because it doesn't provide experimental evidence proving anything. It isn't bad, it just isn't research (in terms of genre). It is enough to submit your paper in order to get feedback, even if it is rejected. If you say that you aren't pushing eforcement, then what is your goal? You published your proposal, and anyone interested can follow it. Some criticize it, but you can't please everybody, really.

Who mentioned 'research'? 2. Mathematical research doesn't provide experimental evidence proving anything, does it? 3.Your only not necessarily invalid point, in my opinion: 'It is enough to submit your paper in order to get feedback'. How would I go about submitting my idea as a paper? 4. My goal is to show people what is in some situations a better way of pronouncing binary numbers, and numbers in some other bases, and hopefully get some appreciation in return, or at least see it thoroughly analyzed. 5. I never aimed to please everybody, but 3 percent seems a bit low. And why deletion?

Right, in math you don't usually experiment, but then you solve some problem and provide proofs. And here are no problems/solutions/proofs here. (For starters, the issue you are tackling might not be considered a 'scientific problem') You can submit your idea, but the odds are it will be considered out of scope for most journals since it is not 'research', and they do publish 'research'. I can only speculate why people tend to comment harshly on your proposal, but I think no 'scientific' issues are involved here (and hence I called it 'political/cultural').

@astronat: See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#Multiple-byte_units

The main question to ask is: why should anyone care?
Naming conventions are a dime a dozen. It's not like they need to be nonsense, not at all. Every computer library developed from scratch comes up with naming conventions, usage conventions, interface conventions, etc. But precisely because such conventions are quite freely choosable, it creates a cost to use them consistently and this will not happen if there is not a very tangible benefit.
If I have a software library with very extensive, say, parallelization support, then it may make sense to learn the conventions that it imposes on the user. Maybe it even finds a way of expressing things more cleverly than existing models and if that happens, it may ultimately take on. Still, this can take a very long time. Many clever programming paradigms from languages such as Lisp or Haskell took decades to seep into the mainstream. Mind you, these are operational advantages that they confer and yet it was not easily accepted.
Introducing a notation/expressive language that does not fill an obvious niche or confer a distinct advantage is mostly a futile exercise and rarely takes off, independent of its rationality. Perhaps the most interesting such experiment is Esperanto, which is, comparatively spoken, a modest success.
So, your idea may be rational (I cannot judge if it is), it may be even modestly useful (I have no opinion on that), but to get many people to adopt it or even just take it seriously, it needs to provide very tangible and substantial benefits and even then its success may still be decades off.
Unlike a mathematical theorem where there may be few people able to judge its merits or proof, but where there is at least a kind of "objective" importance to the question and reality check to the proof, naming jugglery is often close to crankery in the sense that many self-styled physics "revolutionaries" simply clothe either trivialities or non-committal vague statements with verbal jiu-jitsu which makes them capable of "proving anything" and impossible to falsify. I guess that your idea is also a name game is what may induce some of your critics to consider your idea close to crankery.
Again, I personally do not have an opinion about that, but it's clearly not an idea many people consider important to discuss or advances their own understanding of things.
The fact that 3 out of a hundred profs have stated something positive about your idea, may give some indication that you are trying to cram the idea into a hundred people's throats. Is it really such an important idea? I mean, it's not solving world hunger, cancer or even just determining the nature of Dark Matter or the Hubble constant.
It begins and ends with the one question I mentioned at the beginning: Why should anyone care?

The main question to ask is: why should anyone care? --- It seems likely that I've spent more time reading all the comments (including those in chat) and answers here than I've spent over my entire life actually writing and/or speaking numbers in different bases, and I'm in math. For me this only seems to be when working non-trivially with the ternary representation of elements in the Cantor middle thirds set.

Naming conventions are a dime a dozen. Reminds me of this xkcd.

Good answer. Why should anyone prefer to pronounce 10,120 (base eight)  as "one tin one shi two mi (base eight)", instead of "ten thousand one hundred twenty (base eight)"? It just replaces the widely known names of the ones/tens/hundreds/etc places with unfamiliar names. It seems this just reduces the number of syllables needed, but that's not a problem most people need or want solved. I haven't seen any argument of why the proposed method is in any way superior to the usual "non-zip code" way of pronouncing numbers. This seems similar to renaming the digits 0-9, which no one wants.

@NuclearHoagie Did you click on the phrase 'an idea' in the question? It's a link to an article explaining and justifying the idea. Your complaints are all addressed in it. Including how renaming the digits could help prevent confusion among young students learning/acquiring additional/foreign spoken bases.

@MatthewChristopherBartsh I think you'd need some way to show that adding a language element has any pedagogical benefit, and isn't just additional overhead that makes the problem worse. You also have the problems that you can only count up to 2^9 with this system, and you need to remember about twice as many place names (every power is completely unique, unlike ten thousand/hundred thousand/ten million/hundred million, which only introduces a new term every third power).

@NuclearHoagie You didn't click on the phrase, did you?

Terry Tao might suggest that you be skeptical of your own work. In order to produce great ideas, you need to put bad, average, and good ideas through many phases of refinement. If you do not view your own work critically, you might not identify necessary changes.
It is my personal opinion that your idea is not a mathematical idea (or at least, not an interesting one); based on the responses you have received from others, it seems like I am not alone in this opinion. It may be an idea about a topic relevant to math, but it does not provide any insight into the sort of questions that math aims to study. If you view your work skeptically, you may come to the same conclusion as me.
However, this is not to say that your idea is not interesting whatsoever. Suppose I were reading a science fiction book with a civilization that used binary as their customary number system. If one of these creatures said the word "tinmirlish" for 2^123456, I would be intrigued. If I then went and read your naming system, I would be floored by how creative and interesting it is -- changing vowels to express negation and inversion?? Awesome!
Upshot: Maybe the real issue you are facing is how to categorize your idea. I don't think your idea is interesting mathematically, but I think it is very interesting as a world-building concept. Perhaps other people find it interesting in some scopes and uninteresting in others. If you want to convince someone that your idea is interesting, try presenting it in a context that best fits the idea.

Upvoted. 2. Did you mean 'world-building' or 'word-building'? 3. I think my idea is mathematical and linguistic. It's in the overlap of the two areas. 4. The idea of using it a science fiction story had crossed my mind. It could even be a way to get people to experiment with seriously, kind of like what happened with Klingon, although that was unplanned as far as I know. 5. Besides negation and inversion, I considered 'imaginaryness' and asked in Mathematics Chat  what else could be added to the list but I was unable to grasp the suggested idea of quaternions.

I mean world-building, but word-building is a part of that. If you've read anything by Tolkein, you'll know that good word-building is a huge boon to world-building.

I'm not a linguist, so I can't speak to whether your idea is linguistic or not (it seems to be more in the realm of con-langs to me). But making up new words for numbers isn't mathematical, because it doesn't answer any questions that you couldn't have answered with pre-existing names or symbols. If I start using "#" for addition and "@" for multiplication, rewriting pre-existing equations isn't math.

Yes, of course word-building helps enormously with world-building. Lord of the Rings would not have been the same without all those languages :-) 2. I always thought conlanging was a part of linguistics. 3. My system helps you to answer the question of what are the differences between the bases in practical use. If that isn't a mathematical question, does that mean the invention of Arabic numerals was not mathematical? Was it not a mathematical question once what is better, Roman numerals or Arabic ones?

I can already distinguish 1010_4 and 1010_8 from their notation. As for your last questions, I think Captain Emacs's excellent answer gives a better response than I could.

I'm not talking about distinguishing say base ten and base sixteen, I'm talking about comparing them, according to speed, accuracy, aesthetics, whatever.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

@MatthewChristopherBartsh says: "Was it not a mathematical question once what is better, Roman numerals or Arabic ones?"
"What's better?" is not, these days, considered a mathematical question, even in domains professional mathematicians care about. Math deals with determining truths; how you like to communicate those truths is a matter of taste. You'd have to ask historians of science how it was viewed at the time.

But also: zero and the place value system were once revolutionary inventions and are now taught to elementary school kids. Intellectual technology evolves. Your idea about counting in different bases would also have once been an unusual, original thought. These days, there are millions of people who could think of something like it if it solved an actual problem they had.

@Fedya What does 'these days' mean? How about 'mathematical question'? 'historians of science'? Why not historians of mathematics?

@Fedya "Your idea about counting in different bases would also have once been an unusual, original thought. These days, there are millions of people who could think of something like it if it solved an actual problem they had." Are you saying I am not the first to think of my idea?

@MatthewChristopherBartsh "Are you saying I am not the first to think of my idea?" You might be the first to think of some of the specific details. Who knows. But it's an idea that makes people go "yeah ok sure" rather than "oh huh!". A mathematical question is anything that professional mathematicians would consider a mathematical question. "These days" -- I can vouch for since 1945 or so, because I'm familiar with current mathematical culture and it's been fairly stable since that time. History of math is a subbranch of history of science.

@Fedya I imagine a lot of useful discoveries/inventions at first inspired that reaction. How excited were people by the invention of binary numbers? What percentage of professional mathematicians need to consider it a mathematical question? I think it is a fairly easy problem to solve if you are mathematician, but it seems to be an extremely difficult problem to notice. Not just to notice, but even to evaluate when someone else notices it. The idea that in the math classroom understanding what you are doing is more important than getting the right answer was ridiculed by people at first.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

First of all, find out if you are not even wrong. From your description of your proposal, it does not seem to be a falsifiable statement.

My idea is a precise procedure, an algorithm more or less, and is not a theory, and so it is of course not falsifiable. So it is not even wrong, but wrong and right don't apply to a procedure. The question is whether it works. In my humble opinion.

Define "works". "This method of counting makes it easier to understand the binary system"? That's a falsifiable claim.

Upvoted F Poloni. I hadn't thought of that. I guess in that sense my idea is falsifiable, as long as an operational definition of 'easier' and 'understand' is found.

To newbies: of course, by 'falsifiable' we mean 'in principle capable of being falsified', and not that it can actually be proved to be false in actual fact. It's a term from the philosophy of science. Don't imagine that I conceded that my idea is false.

@MatthewChristopherBartsh "Easier to understand" is a well established, testable notion. People have been performing randomized studies to settle such questions for a long time. Take a few hundred students of appropriate age, teach a random half your method and the other half a normal curriculum about binary numbers, then give both halves the same test on the topic and perform some statistical analysis on the results. Doing that would be proper science. Arguing about your idea with people on the internet  is not.

Do mean I should carry out the experiment myself?

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


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How to Address Unprocessable PDF Submissions in SafeAssign for Plagiarism Checks?
I am an astronomy professor who recently started using Blackboard's SafeAssign tool to check for plagiarism in student submissions. I've encountered a persistent issue with one of my students, whose submitted PDF files consistently fail to be processed by SafeAssign. The error message displayed is:

SafeAssign Submission
Unprocessed Attachments
Essay.pdf
We are unable
to process this file. If this is a supported file type, please try
again later.

Despite these files appearing normal (i.e., readable in Blackboard and when downloaded), they cannot be processed by plagiarism checking sites without manual OCR, and even then, the hyperlinks are missing. This discrepancy is notable, especially considering the student’s poor performance on exams relative to their online submissions. I suspect this might be a deliberate attempt to evade plagiarism detection, but I am looking for insights before making any direct accusations.
Has anyone experienced similar issues? Could this be a known student tactic, or possibly a technical glitch with Blackboard/SafeAssign?

https://help.blackboard.com/SafeAssign/Instructor/FAQ Discusses that using ‘Print to PDF’ results in the content not being in text, so unprocessable. Might instead instruct them to submit the actual word processing file.

it could be a deliberate attempt to evade plagiarism, but it could also just be a solitary student whose answers are in a slightly different format for some random tech reason. Honestly, I am a little concerned by your reliance on automatic tools, and quick assumption of cheating after the tool fails.

And is there any reason you have ruled out the possibility that safeassign has a bug? With the student id or the order of the student in the roster for example?

"I suspect this might be a deliberate attempt to evade plagiarism detection, but I am looking for insights before making any direct accusations." Is not, by default, an assumption of cheating. Furthermore, you rely on computers and the internet which relies on computers and this site which relies on computers, thus to publish here a non-specific concern of a professor's reliance on automatic tools seems to be maybe disingenuous. Continuing, he did not say that he had ruled out the possibility that safeassign had a bug. Try to read attentively, and as stated, be nice.

The official Blackboard FAQ contains the following text under the Question "What are SafeAssign's supported file types?":

SafeAssign can only process PDFs if the PDF contains machine-readable true text. If the PDF was prepared from "Print to PDF" or scanned from an imaging device without external optical character recognition (OCR), such as a scanner or cell phone app, then the PDF contains a bitmap or vector "picture" of text. This is not readable as text and SafeAssign currently does not perform OCR. If you can't select the text with your mouse or keyboard in a PDF reader, then there is no true text in the PDF.

To prevent this issue: make sure to export the document from your word processor using the "Export to PDF" option and avoid the "PDF Printer" option from the print menu. Also, don't use the option to 'outline' fonts sometimes found in advanced applications because it replaces the text with vector graphics of the same shape which aren't machine-readable.

So, I would emphasize in class broadly, and likely a specific message to the person with the issue, how to make a SafeAssign-readable PDF.
Attributing malice to this seems unwarranted. Now, if the student persists in the behavior then I would insist on them submitting a readable file in some other format listed in the FAQ.

The answer by @Jon Custer pretty much listed out the reason as for why this happens. The TLDR from the FAQ is basically: The PDF are pages of images of texts, instead of pages of texts, and SafeAssign cannot process image based PDFs.
However, I guess where my personal sentiments differ from the consensus here is that I think this is a fair reason to at least be suspicious (without obviously outright accusing the student of cheating). My last contact with Academia was essentially at the dawn of these plagiarism checkers, and back then this was a super common problem.
Now, the reason why I would personally be suspicious is because most (certainly the popular ones like Word) text editors that offers to convert their documents to PDFs, would almost always convert to a PDF that contains true text. After all, there is very little reason to NOT convert a text document to a true-text PDF. The only legitimate reason I can think of is compression, which unless your document is literally thousands of pages long, does not really merit an argument.
However, maintaining the "innocent until proven guilty" motto, I do recommend restricting the ways someone can convert/construct a PDF. For example, only allowing a word-exported PDF or similar, and specifying that invalid PDFs will not be graded, instead of outright reporting this student to an academic misconduct committee.


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Do I do another masters or keep on looking for a PhD
I graduated last year with a masters degree in physics from a UK University. Unfortunately, despite my overall grades being good, my thesis had a low grade, and my supervisor didn't want to write me a reference. I was able to secure a reference from a secondary supervisor, but he told me he would have to be honest and that the thesis didn't go well.
I think I mistakenly used this reference in many of my PhD applications (particularly US and UK ones), with the result of me getting rejected. Even for applications where I avoid using this reference, I don't seem to be getting anywhere, especially since I still haven't scored an interview. Should I just give up my PhD search for now and do another masters degree?

Why do you want to do a PhD? What would be the goal of another masters? What else are you going to do, have a full-time job making more PhD applications or do you have another plan?

If your MSc thesis didn't go well why would you want to do a PhD? A PhD is essentially a longer, more complicated, and more difficult thesis. I would encourage you to reflect on where you want to be in say 5 years time and take the educational route that gets you there.

@DanielHatton I think that's a valid reason if you have good reason to think a PhD would provide further options; it might even still be a valid reason if it wouldn't, as long as you're okay with it being just a detour in your life or for the intrinsic purpose of doing it. I'm mostly prompting to see if someone asking what they should do next has given thought to the options and is aware of the likely results.

To be fair, ‘all the options for a new PhD’ aren’t necessarily great either.

@BryanKrause I should've mentioned this in my original post, but I do want to at least have the experience of doing research. Although my master's thesis didn't go well, the little bit of "new stuff" we were doing, even if it ultimately went nowhere and wasn't being used in the thesis, was still really exciting to me. I wanted to continue with a PhD to see if I actually really like the process of academic research, and if it turns out I didn't, I'd still have a degree I can transition into use for other jobs.

I guess another way to rephrase my question would be: Are applications to PhD positions competitive enough to the point that any single blemish on the application would tank it? Like is it at the point that even if the rest of my application is great, it won't save me when I don't have a great thesis? Should I be looking to do another master's thesis so my application is more competitive for next time?

Why not run for masters research grants? Here in Portugal many people go for research grants before going for a PhD. (1) Research grants are much easier to obtain, (2) it helps boost your application and find out other PhD programs, (3) it will help you figure out if it's something you like.

@RicardoCruz I don't think I've heard of these research grants before, are they like one year masters programs only for research?

@KevinGuo I don't know about the UK, but in the European Union grants are published in EURAXESS. Grants are the main source of funding for scientific projects and research institutes.

@RicardoCruz Thanks for the tip! I found the list of grants you mentioned, but they seem to mostly be PhD and Postdoc positions. Do the programs you mentioned go under a specific name?

@KevinGuo Maybe EURAXESS website is not easy to navigate, but I think everything is there. You can also consult the website of research institutes or universities. For example, my research institute has these openings (it's very easy to navigate). My engineering school has these openings, see in the bottom (harder to navigate). You can also reach out to professors. A masters-level research grant is a good way to get some experience and build a CV and pays well.

Only you really know what you should do.
However, the main question to be answered when an advisor (or otherwise) is asked to write a letter of support for a PhD application is in essence "can this person successfully earn a PhD". So if, as you admittedly say, your masters did not go well, that does not leave your advisor (or presumably any committee members associated with the thesis) much leverage to honestly support your candidacy for a PhD program.
If there were some truly mitigating circumstances, then most reasonable faculty would include that in a letter of support, but perhaps your advisor(s) have just not seen you demonstrate enough to feel comfortable recommending you (both for academic integrity, professionalism, and perhaps in their eyes to keep you from setting yourself up to fail).
What you have to ask yourself is, how will it be different next time? If you think it will, then perhaps a PhD at a lower ranked institution with a well-worded letter explaining what went wrong and what you will do to make sure it doesn't happen again may be an option. Alternatively, another masters that you have to excel at, potentially at an institution where you can transition to a PhD if its going well (this is fairly straightforward at North American schools).

Thank you for the advice! About your last paragraph, I've actually been advised to play down my master's thesis and not mention it as much, not even my supervisor's name, as supposedly it would give the impression I'm not a good subordinate. I'm not really sure what to do about that anymore. Are there certain situations where I should send some kind of letter and situations I shouldn't?

@KevinGuo as someone who has put his fair share of time on graduate admissions committees, I can tell you that is not the case. First thing we look at is transcripts. We will notice your masters. After that we will expect to see a letter from your masters advisor. If it is missing, we will check the other letters and your statement. Leaving glaring things out will only raise suspicion. Generally your statement is not that important compared to the other factors of your application, but it is a very important place to explain things that deviate from the accepted norms.

I see, so specifically, should I mention it in my statement of purpose or a separate letter? Are there any guidelines I should follow in writing this kind of explanation?

In the UK, Research assistant roles pay quite well (in comparison to most other academic salaries). Try spending a year in one of those instead of another master's. Many people I know convert their RA role into a PhD.


text:
Great recommendations from people not in the field, or ok to decent recommendations from those in it?
I'm planning on applying this fall to several statistics/biostatistics grad programs (probably Master's, maybe PhD; still deciding) and I'm trying to get the best recommendation letters I can.
For context, I graduated a year ago with a BS in Math, a BA in music, and a minor in Stats. I've been working in Pharma, though not in a position where I'm doing much math. I have one recommendation locked down, this being my Faculty Advisor for an REU I was part of and who I've kept up contact with. My other options are a bit dicier from there:
Option 1: My discrete math / topology professor from my sophomore and junior year. I got an A and B in these classes respectively. I went to office hours frequently and had a lot of good conversations and a generally good relationship with this professor. He wrote me the recommendation letter for the REU and I almost did research under him. That being said I haven't talked to him in over 2 years.
Option 2: My machine learning professor from my senior year. Got an A in his class, went to office hours frequently and talked to him about my interests. I asked him if he'd be willing to write a recommendation letter when I thought I was going to go to grad school sooner and he said yes. I've talked to him a bit over email since graduation but that conversation sort of petered out.
Option 3: My music professor from undergrad. Not at all math related but he taught me all throughout undergrad and we have an excellent relationship, still frequently in touch etc. I've gotten the impression most STEM departments won't care much about a recommendation from someone not field-related, but I know he'd write a great letter.
Option 4: My current work supervisor. I think she'd write a really good recommendation, and pharma is certainly biostats related, but we're completely on the manufacturing/engineering side (validation/compliance) and not at all on the clinical side.
I'll probably ask them all, but I'm wondering what you think the best bet is. For all cases, I'm planning on sending them a packet of all the things they might need to write the letter.

I think option 3 is a non-starter. Music is simply too far from biostats for your letter to have any reasonable value.

Recommendation letters should strengthen one's case for the position in question. For graduate school application this mainly means showing that the one has the background necessary for the chosen program, demonstrating the one's scholarly achievements, ability for hard work, and potential for doing research. In this sense, a recommendation from the professor who taught a recent course in probability, statistics or a related subject is probably the most important one. A recommendation from a professor of a mathy (but not necessarily statistics-related) subject is pretty close, especially, if they can present you as an excellent student. This is probably as far as people not in the field goes in most cases.
A music professor can characterize you as a hard-working person, and perhaps (alongside other recommendations) may demonstrate your widely ranging abilities and capacity for adaptation... but such a recommendation is clearly at a disadvantage compared to somebody closer to statistics/math. In other words, I would keep this at best as the third recommendation letter or even forgo this recommendation altogether (there is even a risk that such a recommendation does more damage than good - this may make application look as not serious or not capable of showing more relevant achievements.) It may be emotionally difficult to let go something, to which you have devoted much time and effort (which is likely the case with music), but it is just not relevant to your professional choice.


text:
Does TAing the same course repeatedly help your academic career path?
I'm a PhD student specializing in computer vision, with a previous Master's degree.
Until now, I have TAed the 5xx course "Introduction to Computer Vision" twice, and 4 other courses (including a 5xx Graphics course and 3 other undergraduate computer science courses).
I am set to pursue an academic career path and am wondering how to choose my next course for being a teaching assistant. I am not sure if repeatedly TAing "Introduction to Computer Vision" may help me build a strong CV for academia. On the other hand, another option is to TA the course 5xx Computational Biology.
I prefer to TA the class "Introduction to Computer Vision", however, is there a reason I should go with TAing "Comp. Biology"?

By TAing are you leading or teaching the course, or running labs/hw/tests? I've seen PhD students doing both.

Academia is a vast and diverse place - what kind of academic jobs are you aiming for?  2) 5xx courses are for Master's students?

@mkennedy, I mean taking up the HWs, projects, and designing programming assignments. I am sometimes asked to take up couple of lectures. But not really leading the entire course.

@AlexanderWoo, I am looking to get into professorship, where I teach lectures and mainly be responsible for research.  And yes, 5xx mean courses at graduate student level.

@kalyang - at what kind of university?  MIT, U. Michigan, Kalamazoo, Albion, and Grand Valley State University all hire professors, but their professors do vastly different jobs.

@Alexander Woo: ... Albion, ... --- "It was interesting to see Albion College mentioned, ..." I remembered someone a year or so ago mentioning Albion, wondered if it was you, googled (and surprisingly, I quickly found my earlier comment), but it was someone else and in another SE group. (shortly afterwards) Actually, you did mention Albion there, in the first comment!

From experience, TAing for the same course makes it easier to TA for the same course. In that sense yes, because you'll be able to spend more time and effort towards research and other things.

I doubt that many people would make much of whether you TA the same or different courses, assuming that the tasks are the same for each.
But there are some places that permit advanced doctoral students who have been TAs for a while to actually teach a section of a popular course. Normally that would be one that had several sections (like CS1), taught to the same lesson plans and likely with a common final exam. That is a bit more interesting in the job market as you would have faced students in a normal class, dealt with questions and such, and have been evaluated.
But for handling breakout sessions, answering questions about the material, and conducting standard exams, it is unlikely to have any impact.
Presumably, you are familiar with the course material in any course you would TA, so the variation would mean little unless the tasks were different in some fundamental way.

Have been evaluated - if one is lucky and the course is large enough. I am lucky to get a nonzero number of student evaluations even from my obligatory classes, because so few students are in each specialization. I did some even when doing my PhD, but again, very few students answered the questionnaires.

In my university TAs usually don't get to teach sections of course (unless if a prof is busy with some conference kind of stuff). But I think building some rapport by doing more TAs in the same course will help put me in consideration for such case. (This is just an extrapolation from my experience).
The second time I did the TA for the course, prof (also my advisor) gave complete freedom about HW designs and grading. This is a reason why I considered to TA third time for the course.

In general TAing helps but TAing same course helps or not depends upon how you foresee yourself teaching those courses in the future. Usually teaching is guided by the departmental need and your expertise. If department is interdisciplinary and student takes diverse courses you will have opportunity to develop type of course you want to teach. However some fields have a set of standard courses as required courses. Some of the faculties are hired to teach those required courses. In that case you may not have much flexibility in designing your own course and thus using material that you are currently using to TA as guiding documents.
So, I would suggest if you have opportunities to diversify your CV by teaching different courses as TA and if that is not additional learning burden to you, I think that will help. It will help because you can have choices of courses you want to develop in the future.
Thinking beyond TAing, if you have enough experience TAing, explore opportunities to develop syllabus with your TA Advisor and become instructor of record so you can showcase these experiences in your CV. This experience will help in the future as well.

If you think you might end up wanting a job somewhere that you can teach introduction to computer vision, then TA'ing this course multiple times will help you to come up with a syllabus for teaching this course on your own (which I hope will happen before you graduate, given how tough the job market can be if you don't have any solo teaching experience). Of course, being a generalist in your field can help as well. It really depends, but the greater potential job value is going to come from teaching the course.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


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A postdoc in China vs a postdoc in the US
I am a PhD student about to graduate from a university in Western Europe, and recently I have received two postdoctoral job offers - one in Beijing and another in Los Angeles, and I find it hard to choose between them. Thing is, there are faculty I can easily collaborate with in both institutions - therefore, since the teaching load in Beijing is lower (and the pay is higher) I tend to prefer choosing it over Los Angeles.
However, my supervisor (and also several of my colleagues) told me that as far as my academic carreer is concerened, it's better for me to choose Los Angeles. The reason (according to him) is that no one will take me seriously after a postdoc in China, and whatever collaborations I will do there would likely be ignored - it sounds to me pretty extreme (and unreasonable), and I was wondering whether it is true or it is just some bias I should ignore. I do plan on attempting an academic carreer and applying for a permanent position after this job, and more specifically, I would prefer a permanent job in Western Europe (due to family considerations). Is it true that a postdoc position in China would ruin my chances of landing a permanent position in Europe or North America? It sounds pretty extreme and unreasonable to me, but I don't know what to think.
If it matters, my field is Applied Mathematics. Thanks in advance for every reply...

Where do you want to end up? What travel budget will you have to get out and make contacts ?

@JonCuster, Eventually I would like to find a permanent position at some research oriented institution, preferably in W. Europe (mostly due to personal reasons - however, E. Europe, North America and other western countries are also fine with me). I know I will have a relatively high travel budget in Beijing, so attending conferences shouldn't be that big a problem (most of the conferences in my field are in Europe anyway).

Ok. The point is to prioritize keeping current connections and making new ones in places you might want to end up. In person meetings at conferences and workshops are the gold standard.

The other question is how good your Chinese is…

I would trust your advisor and colleagues' judgement a little bit more than suggested so far on this site. One person may be biased, extreme or unreasonable, but if numerous colleagues give a similar answer it is less likely that everyone is being biased and extreme. These colleagues likely know how faculty hiring works in their respective countries. It would be difficult for users here to assess the bias or unreasonableness of the advice without being from the same specific subfield and knowing exactly which institutions/labs are considered.

@ojfewowmx The tricky bit is how old the judgement of the professors is. It was probably sound advice 30 years ago but especially regarding China I'm not sure whether it still is today.

"Thing is, there are faculty I can easily collaborate with in both institutions" Sure, but the real question is whether you will be able to build relationships with people in your target countries (Western Europe and the US) during your postdoc. Your advisor's statement sounds a bit extreme, but it will almost surely be much easier to build a professional network which will help you in your search for a tenure track position in Western Europe or the US from the US, as opposed to trying to build it from China.

I would strongly encourage anyone seeking to move countries to also carefully consider the political climate of the target host country as well as the relations between the target host country and the one you are coming from. It is also important to consider if you are compatible with the culture and laws of the target host country/city.

For better or worse, networks and networking are important in academia. The opportunities that you get - collaborations, invitations to give talks, 'encouragement' to apply for jobs, etc - depend strongly on people knowing that you exist, and forming a favourable opinion of you. Who you know matters, and who those people know mattes.
Both postdocs offer opportunities to grow and strengthen your network. However, the direction of growth will be very different. If you go to China, you will probably build a strong set of contacts in China (and perhaps in Asia more widely). If you go to the USA, you will develop good links in North America. Neither of these is inherently 'better' or 'worse' than the other - but one may be more helpful than the other in helping you achieve your long-term goals (whatever those may be).
For example, if your long-term goal is to end up back in your home country, you may wish to consider whether the academic community there is more closely-connected to the USA or to China. Your advisor's opinion (or prejudice) here may be shared by others, even if it lacks a sound basis.

Yes, it sounds pretty extreme. There is no reason to think that research, especially in math, should be of any lesser quality in China than that in the US.
However, the world political situation is, at the moment, unsettled and doesn't seem to be improving. I'd think that US is the safer (though "politically correct") option here.
I'd also think, and hope that your future chances depend more on what you can accomplish in a postdoc than the venue. But the world ain't perfect. Long way from.
Also consider language and such for a long stay anywhere.

I hate to write this answer, but I think you should go to Los Angeles.
Things like this happen to people who (look like they are) associated with China. It's silly and biased and racist, but some people will see "China" and automatically think all sorts of negative things, including of you as a person. You might think less of them as a result, but they might still hold power over you (c.f. the person in the link above). This also happens in academic settings.
If you have reason to think the postdoc in China is more desirable, that's a reason to fight the bias and go anyway, but since they're about equal you might as well take the US postdoc.

I'm sorry, but isn't this essentialy saying some people have racist views against Chinese and therefore OP should cater to these views and avoid being associated with Chinese?

@quarague: No, it's saying that OP should do what is likely to benefit their long term goals and that OP is not in a position and cannot be expected to cure other people's racism.

@quarague do you know of a way to change the racist views of all people? If not, do you know of a better option?

I think the evidence for racism you linked relative to the question at hand is sketchy at best and what you are suggesting is reinforcing the racism. I think it suffices to not act as if everyone else where a racist but rather assume the best in people. It will work out in most cases, help make the world they you want it to be and in the rare cases where you actually encounter racism you can still decide whether you want to fight against it or not. Overall much better than just assuming everyone is a racist and therefore acting in a racist way yourself.

I don't necessarily agree with your advice to choose the LA position over the Beijing one, but the point you make is valid.  It may not be "politically correct", but it's the truth, to some extent.  For better or worse, the political atmosphere in the West is strongly anti-China these days, and academia is not immune to this.

I think the recommendation from your supervisor comes from the belief that the quality of the research happening in China is inferior to that happening in the US or in Europe.
You wrote that at both institutions there is faculty for you to collaborate with. Is this based purely on things you looked up once you had the offer or do you know some of these faculty from conferences or read their papers during your research so far?
If you already know them and their research I would interpret this as meaning that your supervisors recommendation is outdated. If on the other hand you only learned about the research after searching for it and haven't encountered it beforehand I would trust your supervisor a lot more.

the quality of the research happening in China is inferior to that happening in the US or in Europe This isn't stated in the question, however.

@Allure I'm explicitly not claiming this is true, I wrote that I think that is what the supervisor believes and then wrote an answer how OP can decide whether that belief is relevant or not


text:
Can I publish my research article in a journal AND as a chapter in a book?
As I understand you cannot publish your paper in two different journals, I was wondering if the same rule applies to chapters in books.  My research (52 pages long) was summarized into 20 pages to fit into a chapter of a book and in another language (Portuguese).  Now, I would like to publish the same paper (in its entirety) in a journal, rather than a chapter in a book. Is it possible?
Thank you.

It should be fine. But do not claim it as two different publications in your CV.  List it only once, with both references.  Perhaps calling it "summary" in one of the references.

You are phrasing your question in a slightly confusing way. It seems that what you have is a 20 page text that has already appeared in a book, and a 52 page text that you would like to submit to a journal. Is that correct?
In that case, they are hardly "the same paper". Rather, what you seem to be asking is:

Can I write two different papers (a brief summary for a book and also
a much longer journal paper) based on the same body of research?

To which the answer is a resounding yes. Of course, the paper is only likely to be accepted if it adds something substantial on top of the 20 page summary paper.
Note that this has nothing to do with one publication being part of a book and the other being in a journal. Your question suggests that you believe that if you tried to publish in a journal the same paper that has already appeared in a book (which is not what you are doing), then somehow different rules would apply then when you tried to publish in a journal a paper that has already appeared in another journal, but this is not the case. The difference between a book chapter and a journal paper is not really relevant to the fact that journals will generally not republish texts that have already appeared elsewhere. (At least I am confident that this is how it works for journals that I am familiar with.)

I would say that going from journal article to textbook chapter is fairly normal - as long as you hold copyright and the publisher wants to include the chapter there shouldn't be a problem. The goal of a textbook is to present known information to its audience.
Going in the other direction presents some potential issues.

If the work has been published in any format (other than some common exceptions such as preprints or theses) a journal might not accept the submission.
If it has already been published, you may no longer hold copyright. A derivative work might run afoul of some license or copyright agreement.
If there is no substantial new info included in the paper, you might have a hard time finding a willing journal even if it's not technically against the publisher's rules and there are no copyright issues.

In your situation, I don't think you can just submit as if the textbook chapter didn't exist. But I don't see any reason not to try to get your work published.  Basically, I think you need to coordinate with journals and your book publisher to ensure that there are not any roadblocks.

Strange question, because a journal article would have to be shorter than a book chapter, it would not be the longer version (at least that's my experience with journals). But if the second publication is an extended version of the first, and particularly, if it is a translation into a different language (as you say) they may count as sufficiently distinct to publish both, in principle. Otherwise, rework the stuff to make it distinct.


text:
Reasons not to date fellow graduate students
I am an undergraduate student, intending to go to graduate school (physics) next year. I spoke with some of the graduate students I am currently taking courses with, and they mentioned that they were formally advised not to date each other, although informally it was acknowledged that this occurs regardless.
I can think of one obvious reason not to date someone you work closely with, namely, if you break up it can be extremely awkward. Are there other considerations?

Have you heard of "two body" problem ?

@Nobody in physics, yes...I'm not sure what you mean though

Tag [two-body-problem] : For questions about the "two-body problem" in academia, which refers to the challenges partners in a committed relationship (particularly those in academia) face in obtaining jobs at the same university or within a reasonable commuting distance from each other. On the left column of this page, click Tags. Search for [two-body-problem]. You'll know what I mean. I don't think everyone will have this problem. Just that it's a potential issue.

Interesting. This seems to be an issue of finding a position together; but if you are already located at the same university, does the two-body problem apply?

What if the two have different postdoc jobs after graduation ? Or one finds a tenured assistant professorship at one school and the other got a postdoc 2000km away ?

Point taken, although this is a general issue of dating someone in academia, regardless of whether you are in school together or in same research group.

Ideally, ask the students you heard this from what reasons were given for this advice. Or, if you yourself are "formally" advised in this way, ask about reasons. This may simply be tribal tradition that may have started ten years ago with an acrimonious breakup between two students and got perpetuated in a monkeys-ladder-banana-ice water way.

@Nobody: I'd say the two-body-problem is not such much a problem for "two phd students" (as most will not continue in academia) but rather for "a phd student who wants to stay in academia and any other person, student or not" :-)

I dated two fellow graduate students in my department. The first one ended badly, and now we don't talk. I've been together with the second one for over a decade. We're now both independent investigators in the same institution. The two body problem was extremely painful, but sometimes it works out. Your milage may vary.

The only reason I can think of for a formal warning (which makes me think this is a policy, rather than just mentoring advice) is that there's some concern-- and possibly some past scandal-- about one member of a couple being in some position of authority over another member of a couple.
A specific example would be one member taking a course, and the other being the TA/grader for the course:  Obvious conflict of interest.
Different universities have different rules about this, from the draconian ("grad students don't date other students") to the relaxed ("be grownups about this and disclose the conflict of interest when and if it arises.")

Do you know of a place with "grad students don't date other students" and the consequences, if not followed? For me (European), this seems absolutely horrible and out-of-place, on a same level as "grad students are not allowed to speak non-academic people"

@user111388 I even heard about something that is more ridiculous than dating restriction. In my school going to local nightclubs as a graduate student is frowned upon because there are always undergrad students. Even if I dance just with a fellow grad student.

@user111388 can I name a specific institute off the top of my head?  No.  But I am sure I have seen universities here in the States with that policy... at least on paper.  I don't think it's very common, and I have no way of knowing if it was the result of a recent problem, or some rule that's been on the books since 1950 and never updated.


text:
Change of research field
I am an undergrad physics student and my research experience has mainly been in the field of Condensed Matter Physics. Through the experience I have come to realize that it is not what I want to continue with and wish to change my specialization when I apply for my masters. If I were to contact an advisor from a field different from the one I have some experience working in to join a group for say a Research Masters, will the experience (despite it being in a different field) work in my favour?

I am very confused by the close flag. This is an undergraduate student with research experience wanting to change specialization when apply for masters. Why close it by "Problems facing undergraduate students"? If this is a mistake, please retract it. Thanks.

I don't see any closed flags...

You won't because your reputation is not >3k yet.

It really depends 'how different'... without this information it is not possible to give an answer.  Even then, it would likely be far too subject specific to give a meaningful answer here.  I'd recommend discussing this with an academic that you trust for advice.

There are lot's of people changing their field after finishing a PhD. Or even faculty changing it in relation to new topics coming up and new research interests. I don't think this is a too big risk for an undergrad. Go for it!

My undergraduate degree was in Electrical Engineering. My masters/PhD was in Materials Science. My career has been in (not enough characters to list all the fields and subfields). Switching between bachelors and masters is quite, quite common (physics to chemistry, EE to bioengineering, ...).

Will the experience (despite it being in a different field) work in my favour?

Yes.  You will be showing that you are careful and meticulous in lab work, that you follow instructions and follow safety procedures, that you figure things out, that you correctly apply what you have been taught, that you are creative, that you have initiative, that you understand the scientific method, that you document your work, that you know how to take careful measurements and analyze your data, etc. etc.

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


text:
Publishing on arXiv in preparation for WWW conference
There's a framework I've been working on and I'm interested to release it to the open source and research community but I'd also really like to publish it at the upcoming WWW conference.
Is it against the rules of that conference to pre-publish a paper I later submit there, or at least the crux of such a paper, on a site like arXiv?

Since the conference will make  the papers from the proceedings open access "The proceedings of WWW are published online (open access) and through ACM Digital Library, and it is considered one of the most impactful conferences in computer science." I don't think the arxiv preprint should be a problem. However, you should e-mail first to the WWW2017 committee to see if this is against the rules.

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


text:
Professional editing of a thesis
I am a professional freelance editor. I edited a thesis and subsequently the candidate has refused to pay my fee. Can I claim intellectual property rights over those editing changes and require the candidate not to use them in their submitted or published thesis?

"I edited a thesis" Is this legal in your country?

@scaaahu it is fairly common when the thesis is written in English by a non native speaker. I see no problem in that, neither legal nor moral. The thesis is supposed to show that the candidate can do independent research. Letting somebody else check the English is good practice in real research, so why not during the thesis?

@MaartenBuis I think it depends on what the OP meant by "edit". If the OP simply fixed the grammar errors, what is the "intellectual property rights" the OP is talking about?

@scaaahu my suspicion is that the OP is thinking in the wrong direction. Instead of property rights (s)he should think in terms of a contract.

@MaartenBuis: "The thesis is supposed to show that the candidate can do independent research" - well, it depends on the amount of editing necessary, but the thesis is also, somehow, useful for showing that the PhD candidate is able to present their work in a coherent text that is usable without excessive efforts in post-processing. Indeed, I consider that a part of "doing independent research" (or, let's say, doing pretty much anything related to information or knowledge independently).

If the editor understands the text, then that condition is fulfilled as far as I am concerned.

Professional editing of theses is common practice in Australia, even when the candidate is a native English speaker. Editing can involve more than spelling and grammar; it can improve the expression by reformulating, adjusting syntax, eliminating repetition and suggesting alternative vocabulary. The editor will understand the principles of clear academic style and discourse. However, editing changes must be confined to the level of language use and not affect the organisation or structure of the thesis.

I think you'd be well within your rights to take the offender to Small Claims Court for non-payment.

Thanks for that advice and it's probably what I will do.

@mochaval No problem. Good luck.