text:
Is "On XXX of YYY" a good thesis title?
I've seen many theses with long long title.
I understand that can help to narrow down the scope of the thesis.
Yet, I was recently asked to think of the title of my thesis, and I don't like those long long titles.
Is something in the form of "On XXX of YYY" a good title?
For instance,

"On the uncountability of real numbers"
"On the identification of biological systems"

I think this can make the thesis rather straightforward. Is such a title specific enough to attract the intended audience?

Good by what standards? What did your supervisor say? This question just reads like an invitation to discussion and opinion.

I always thought that titles like this sound archaic (for instance On the Origin of Species). You can just publish "The Origin of Species" and it will be just as fine, and shorter. That said, I occasionally entertain myself with naming a paper like that, just for fun.

I'd think from the readers' point of view: would the title likely attract your intended audience (sensitive enough)? And would the title likely discourage unintended audience (specific enough)? Straightforward does not mean short; you can have a long title that is still vague.

Not so much for theses, but for papers there is also the added factor that I am convinced that having a generic, non-descript, or even plain misleading paper title can cost you readers, citations, and impact.

I edited the question to make it more specific (Thanks, Penguin_Knight for the suggestion.) @Costa, if this is not what you intended to ask, feel free to re-edit!

@xLeitix: it will cost the person citations of their thesis?

@OswaldVeblen That's why I said "not so much for theses, but for papers".

The title of a work is the first thing that people will use to decide whether to read it or not.  You want it to say as clearly and lucidly as possible what it is that you have contributed.  If you title something "On XXX of YYY", then that says you've done a loosely coupled collection of investigations regarding the relationship of XXX and YYY.  If, however, the important conclusion of your thesis is more specific, it's good to say that in your title.
To make up an example, compare:

"On the diet of Antarctic seals": this document studied diet exhaustively, and came up with very thorough data but no particularly big surprises.
"Antarctic seal diet dependent on frozen pizza": this document studied diet, and found something rather bizarre that clearly needs more study.

In sum: short is good, but unnecessarily vague is bad.

I personally don't care for this style of title.  Seeing a title like "On the cromulence of blobs" makes me wonder: What exactly about the cromulence of blobs is the author investigating?  Why doesn't she just tell me?  It tends to leave me less piqued than frustrated, and gives me the subconscious suggestion that rather than producing a specific result, the paper is just going to ramble on about blobs and their cromulence.
But in general, for choosing a title: the first question is, what kind of thesis did you write?  Some theses (especially doctoral) are original and present new results, others (especially undergraduate and sometimes masters) are expository and simply explore existing results.
For an original thesis, my advice would be to choose a rather specific title that accurately describes your results, even if it is long.  I would use the following rule of thumb to evaluate potential titles: look at all the papers you know that contain closely related work (hopefully you have cited all of them, so all you should need to do is open your bibliography).  For each of them, ask yourself: Does my title make it clear that what I did is different from what's in this other paper?  If not, your title is not specific enough.  Other researchers doing related work will want to be able to tell at a glance whether your thesis is likely to address the question they have in mind.
For an expository thesis, a more general title is fine: just state the topic that you wrote about.  People are unlikely to come looking for such a thesis with a specific question in mind; they may read your thesis more for a general overview of the topic.

Mmmm...cromulent blobs...

I don't think the title of a thesis or paper often does this - the abstract is more important for stating the key results. I view the title more as a sort of decoration: a way for the author to express themselves, or to draw an analogy with other papers.

That name made me curious and i opened the Question. But i did not got from name what is it about.
If thesis is about to make people curious, then go for it. but if you want a name that one is real representation of your thesis. Then choose an alternate.

I would argue that the main target audience of a thesis is forced to read it anyway, so there is no point in making a "catchy" title. On the other hand, I think these titles can indeed be informative, specially if you are in the field (think "On the use of linear kernel SVM for OCR"),

YES, but attract them with main article would be better rather than curiosity, and every one is not curious. That was my suggestion you have full right to offence.

OCR= Optical Character Recognition ? right? if I am from this field i would like to read it. as i have also worked in Hand Writing Recognition.
But if OCR is unknown to me. Curiosity cant be cause to read.


text:
Including desired rank in a cover letter for an open-rank faculty position?
I'm an assistant professor in my fifth year and have decided to go on the job market this year.  Obviously I prefer tenured positions to pre-tenure positions, but I'm interested in either one.  Would it be weird to leave this ambiguous in a cover letter, that is, to simply say "I am applying for a position in your department" without specifying the rank?  It  seems to me that if I say I'm applying for an associate position, then some departments might say "oh, she's not ready for an associate position, too bad, we would have hired her at the assistant level", whereas, if I apply at the assistant level, I might be passing up opportunities for a tenured position.

I've been on faculty recruiting committees for well over a decade, and I have never read a cover letter.

If I head an application without cover letter on the table I never read the application.

@Dirk I think JeffE is referring to the fact that for many academic positions, the cover letter serves solely as an administrative tool so the application gets routed to the proper committee (e.g., "I am applying for the open tenure-track assistant professor position in the C.S. department" is really about the only important part of the letter). That said, in at least one case I found out that a comment I made in my cover letter about previous teaching experience was the reason the department chair flagged my application, and I subsequently got the job.

I also do not read applications in which the cover letter does not say anything more than "I am applying for the position...". I expect that the applicant is able to express why the position is interesting for him and why I should be interested in him.

@Dirk Interesting. Guidance I've been given for faculty positions has been, "Don't waste your time discussing the position in the cover letter." This may not be the best guidance in the world, but I'm not sure I agree that the cover letter is a particularly good place (for an academic position) to discuss why the position is interesting. Certainly if there is something unique that should be mentioned, I would mention it, but I wouldn't rely on the cover letter to discuss important information germane to the application.

I should add that I am in the German academic system (for which the application process for faculty positions is at least slightly different, e.g. you don't need to add recommendation letters with the application (but in a later phase)).

@Dirk: That's what research and teaching statements, which all US academic job applications require, are for.  The cover letter is simply redundant.  Moreover, many web-based application systems don't even give you a way to upload a cover letter.

@JeffE: Right. In Germany it is not standard to have a research and teaching statements. However, I have often seen people who have general teaching and research statements on their homepage and then an additional cover letter could illustrate why the specific position is interesting for the specific candidate.

@JeffE: I'm  not sure your experience is universal.  I've had interviews where the interviewer brought up things I'd mentioned in my cover letter (and not elsewhere), so at least some people do read them.  I agree that they are not a very important piece of an application, but in some cases you want to include information that isn't appropriate anywhere else.

I suspect this is one of these questions where there is no truly "correct answer" as you can't predict what's going on in any given search committee, but I think you're unlikely to do any damage by leaving it open.  At least my understanding of these things is that a department would rather hire you w/o tenure (note that this is not quite the same as the associate/assistant distinction) as it is less of a headache with the administration; you'll get tenure if they really want you, and don't think they'll get you otherwise.  I don't think it will matter much what you wrote in your cover letter.  Concentrate on making them want you, and then worry about what they have to do to get you.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Does it make sense to apply for research positions requiring a bachelor's degree with graduation still 4 months away?
Basically, the position Research Associate I at The Institution (United States) carries the requirement of a bachelor's degree. The application description also provides an email address to lab faculty for those interested in the position. I'm due to graduate in December of this year, so I'm still an undergraduate. Would I be realistic in applying for this position with graduation 4 mo. away, or would it hurt to email the lab faculty and see what they're looking for in the position?

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it belongs on careers.stackexchange.com

@RoboKaren: Careers.SE is not a Q&A; it’s an actual job market. This certainly does not belong there.

I am voting to close this question as unclear, because it is unclear what this collection of details is actually detailing. Even with this details, it seems that your questions can only be answered by whoever is offering the position.

It can't hurt to email the lab faculty and see what they're looking for in the position.  Also, it can't hurt to submit an application and not be chosen.

My lab conducts a search for post-baccalaureate fellows every year. In most cases, the applicants are completing their final year of their undergraduate study and have an anticipated graduation date, and are able to share reference letters and a transcript with us. At least in my field (neuroscience) it's completely normal to apply for a post-baccalaureate position before you have officially obtained your degree.

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


text:
TA talks to others about students, what to do?
I am an undergraduate student at a university in the US.
Unfortunately, I have a concern regarding one TA of a class I took this past year. This individual insults other students in the university during his TA session, and I also found out from other people that this TA has been talking to other people (not just the professor and TAs for the class) about people's grades in the class.
My question is, is it within my power to lodge a formal yet anonymous complaint that will be taken seriously about this?
I am concerned about my identity becoming known because this TA is a strong student, and seems to have a lot of power in the department (and is close with the professor teaching the class).

check your university's privacy policy. I doubt that TAs are allowed to release student's grades to other people

@Mark In the US, that's protected information by federal law (FERPA), regardless of any additional institutional policies.

A documented FERPA violation on the scale you describe would be a serious offense at a US institution, and would be much harder for a protective professor to ignore  than the "trash talk" that you describe.

There should be a student affairs dean if you have concerns about approaching the professor or department. I find it strange that a top institution would employee undergraduates as TAs. At the institution I am at, TAs must hold a Bachelors degree, at a minimum, and often they are PhD candidates in the department that have completed their first level comprehensives. If the student is a Post-baccalaureate Student, then they can be hired, even if there degree is in another field. The only exception I have seen is where students assisted in problem sessions where the Professor was in attendance.

About FERPA, Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. See Dept of Education and the Compliance Office to file a complaint.

@BasilBourque - The problem with a FERPA complaint is that it takes a long time to process.

@AMR: Undergraduate teaching assistants don't seem unusual to me, and a Google search suggests that they can be found at many universities I think are well-regarded in the US. You may have a different notion of "top university" than I do, though.

@Vectornaut. I went to one of those top institutions that used unsupervised (in the sense of in running recitation sections) undergraduate TAs, and while I do not recall as bad an experience as the OP, I now find it strange that it would be allowed, seeing the model in place where I am now.

@AMR: In case you're interested, the report "Using Undergraduates as Teaching Assistants in Introductory Programming Courses: An Update on the Stanford Experience" (Roberts, Lilly, and Rollins, 1995) gives a sense of the advantages some departments might hope to gain from employing undergraduate TAs, although of course all fields and all departments are different.

Does this result in any particular problem to you? I mean your complains can be much more effectively argued in front of any authority, if you can tell (and prove) specific examples how it hinders your education. Mind, I don't argue that TA was right, I am just trying to help your argument.

There's no question that this TA is a third-rate human being. Don't jump to conclusions as long as you don't know his intentions. While his behaviour isn't acceptable, he may just be misinformed.

I don't understand why you have to be afraid of any types of revenge coming from this person. He does not have any power to do anything to you.

Trash talking and aggressive behavior is addressed in Team Geek. It's too common in IT.

Here's to hoping he does not see this post. — [citation needed]

When you have a complaint about a teaching assistant for a course, you should generally address it to the instructor of record first. Even if you believe the professor will dismiss your complaint, going straight over the professor's head will make you look bad.
Here are some suggestions for making a well-received complaint:

Make your complaint in writing (email).
Do not include any subjective judgment of the TA's behavior, only objective observations of what you have seen and experienced.
Give specific evidence to support your claims.
Phrase it as if you believe the professor is not aware of this behavior, whether you truly believe this or not.
Don't offer suggestions on what actions to take ("I think you should prevent this TA from working in future courses"), just describe what you have seen.
You can specify what steps you would like the professor to take to keep your identity a secret from the TA when discussing the complaint with him. (Only you or someone close to your situation can know how identifiable such a complaint will make you, and what details need to be omitted to anonymize you effectively.)

If the professor does not seem to take the matter seriously, you can escalate your complaint:

To the department head
To a student ombudsperson at your institution

I rarely want to upvote twice, but this one I wish I could. Good guidelines for reporting any bad behaviour in any situation.

I disagree with informing only the professor in the first step. This makes it harder to decide to escalate the issue (which I'm sure would be needed in this case) because escalating it implies that the asker gives up on the professor resolving it satisfactorily. Instead the asker should send his/her complaint to the professor but CC to the head of department and explicitly request complete confidentiality. This ensures that the head of department is immediately aware of the issue and subsequently one can send follow-up emails if one is not satisfied with the outcome.

@user39427: Anyway regardless of whom you decide to report to about the TA, I think it will not matter so much if you persevere. I fully support your goal of preventing such TAs from 'teaching' other victims, and I hope you will succeed!

@user21820 it depends on the situation. In my experience, some (not many) professors would find offensive that superiors are involved, and actively ignore you.

@Davidmh, I second your observation/opinion. Cc'ing higher-ups is rarely taken well.

I third Davidmh's observation.  When someone sends a cc: to a department head (or university administrator) who is not directly relevant to the issue at hand in the first complaint, then it can easily be viewed as a kind of spammy behavior. But this case is kind of extraordinary, so I don't think it would be treated that way.

@user21820  If the professor do not answer the email or answer, but downplays the case without specifying what kind of solutions he will do, the OP has much better case to take further actions.

I would add a first bullet point to the list to carefully and accurately document the incidents. "This guy is a meanie!" is a lot harder to act on than "on Sept 3, he said that Joe was an idiot, Jane was stupid, and that none of us [students] will ever accomplish anything with our lives."

@Davidmh: They can't actively ignore unless their superiors do not care for students.

@paulgarrett: If such a grave situation is not resolved when such an open and straightforward action is taken, it only reflects extremely badly on the department and I would recommend students to stay far away from that university.

@KCd: Your last sentence is precisely my point. Matters ought to be handled as simply as possible, but no simpler, otherwise they would never be handled properly at all, or worse still cause a far bigger problem.

@user21820 some things are the professor's call and due to academic freedom, there is little their superiors can do about it. So if, for example, in this institution the TA is freely decided by the professor, they may try to mediate; but the professor can be stubborn and insist.

@Davidmh: I'm aware of this problem of some professors who abuse their so-called academic freedom, in which case I have no choice but to advise students to avoid them and if possible the university itself. I far prefer that students feel warmly at home than in some cold ivory tower.

It also does not really help that he is one of the strongest undergraduates in the major at my institution, and that he has and exerts a tremendous amount of influence on the community of my major.

Indeed; you have a classic case of a destructive hero.
I would follow the top upvoted answer meticulously, but add steps at the end. If you experience retaliation or consequences or failure in the steps outlined by ff524, I would file a formal FERPA complaint. People who retaliate against you for squealing might turn around really quick once they know the federal government is watching him.

You have the right to skip over the instructor of record and go straight to whatever level of administration you trust.  This is to be recommended in this case, due to your fear of retaliation.
I advise you to leave out the general remarks.  Your observations about the ill effects on the department and the community are your private motivation for blowing the whistle.  So keep your complaint simple and specific.
If, after having selected the level of administration you wish to present your complaint to, you are still uncomfortable with your identity being known, then here is what you can do: create a new email account solely for this purpose.  Use that email address to write to the administrator you have selected.  Begin with a paragraph about how if anyone else opens the email message they should not read it.
In your letter, present an itemized list of unethical things the TA did.  You may add one or two sentences about each item.

Put the actual complaint text in a Word document attached to the email - Word documents often have personally identifying metadata. Kind of a waste to set up "anon@gmail.com" and then have your name in the attached document.

Word documents often have personally identifying metadata -- Oh.  Would that still be there if one converts to pdf?  If so, then perhaps an attached text file would be better.  Or Wordpad?

Even pdf files may have personally identifying metadata, such as paths, embedded in their properties. Use RTF or (better) TXT.

Regarding pdf, it's far worse than just paths. For example, a PDF created from Word will include the author's name (if using a properly licensed copy of word) in the "Author" field that can be viewed directly from the "properties" window in Acrobat.

If you setup a throw-away anonymous email account, you can also setup a throw-away word processor, e.g., LibreOffice within a Linux Live-CD session

An email with a subject in all caps starting with CONFIDENTIAL MESSAGE would go straight into my spam folder without me seeing it.

I simplified the suggested procedure, based on commenters' constructive feedback -- thanks, everyone.

Either the secretary in question is honest and will stop reading — Who lets their secretary read their email???

@JeffE - You'd be surprised.  Example: I was signing up to be a volunteer community translator once.  I wrote an email to the guy who was going to check my command of the target language.  I was already slightly acquainted with him.  I wrote him in the target language, asking if we could do the interview on the phone so I didn't have to drag my five-year-old around campus with me on a snow day (i.e. no school).  I got a response in English that didn't fit with what I had written.  When my son and I showed up in the guy's office, and I asked him about the strange email, he sheepishly ...

... told me that he gets so much email he has his assistant deal with his email.  (He's the director of a big student volunteer center.)  //  Another example is my assemblyperson.  95% of the time, when you email her address, her assistant responds.  But once in a while, she writes back herself.  //  I mentioned the secretary because the OP may end up dealing with a pretty big cheese.

I found out later that the aforementioned TA was telling a lot of
  other students (beyond the professor and other TAs) on campus people's
  grades in the class and mocking those with low ones.

This is almost always against the university's code of conduct, and if you're really serious about getting rid of him this semester probably your best shot.  If you can prove that he gossiped about student grades regularly, that will likely force the department's hand.
If at all possible, I'd suggest getting through the class first.  Complaints by current students (with low grades) towards a TA or prof are generally greeted with skepticism by administrators.
If you have proof, I'd suggest going to the dean or provost.  This is your best chance to avoid any sort of retaliation from the TA or prof, but be prepared.

This is a real moral dilemma because such a person is destined to become a really bad boss some day.
Here are some things to be careful of.

If there is an enquiry then person X will turn up with friends ostensibly for moral support but in fact to back him/her up and probably knock you down. Make sure you have some allies to support your case otherwise you will lose.
Once a complaint is out there, you lose control of anonymity. Your identity can get back by gossip or through a retrospective appeal to freedom of information or similar.
Sometimes doing the right thing is just hard. Read about Gandhi if you want to be convinced of that. Decide if you are tough enough. You can be sure that X is.
Speak to an official student counsellor. They are bound to confidentiality.
Without gossiping, put feelers out to see who supports your point of view. Rather than making suggestions, ask questions like, Do you think we can do anything about it? Let them talk and gauge whether a joint complaint is necessary/worthwhile.

Once a complaint is out there, you lose control of anonymity. — [citation needed]  Obviously that depends on the institutions policies for addressing complaints, even assuming that the complaint is not filed anonymously.

@JeffE - I speak from knowledge of particular circumstances. I am not at liberty to give details.  In any case we all know how unsecure information is these days. Lost and leaked data are everywhere. Even before computers, reliable confidentiality depended entirely on the integrity of individuals. If X is a favourite of someone in power then they may have like minds. Information could get back to X.


text:
What is the name of the office in an institution where graduates and alumni are helped with employment?
When I went to college, I remember there was an office that would help students, graduates and alumni get their first job.  What is that office called?
P.S. If you feel the English Stack Exchange more appropriate for this question, please move it there instead of down voting it.

Placement office?

The exact name will probably depend on the institution.  I just googled with the name of my son's college, and it gave me a short name (Career Center) and a fancy name (Center for Career and Professional Development).

It might not exist, at least formally. I routinely get requests for students (next to) graduate, even tough there are formal venues available.

In US universities, this office is commonly called Career Services or some variation on that, such as "career center", "career development", etc.

On campus, my career/alumni connection office was called the career center. They help students with their cover letters, resumes, interviews, connections and job postings. I am not sure for other schools if they have an office just dedicated for jobs, like a head hunting agency ran by the school.

It is called by various names - placement cell, placement center, career service, career center. There is no single name for it.

I upvoted this answer because it tells me something I didn't know - placement cell. I Googled for it and found Central Placement Cell, University of Delhi.


text:
Is it wise to get another PhD in statistics after finishing PhD in math?
I am currently starting my second year of PhD study in mathematics at an institution ranked 70-80 in math in the US. In my first year, I have taken some courses in probability theory and passed two of three qualifying exams.
After taking the probability courses and since my girlfriend is pursuing a master in statistics. I found myself really interested in statistics, is it wise to get another PhD in statistics after finishing PhD in math, or should I try to apply for a PhD in statistics now?
Is it possible for me to get admitted to an good institution(ranked 30-40 in US) with only some backgrounds in math?

I have voted to reopen.  The linked to question is very general.  Since the OP has named two specific fields, the answers can be much more targeted.  The prospect of doing multiple PhDs is a common enough academic concern that there is no need to impose the restriction that there be only one such question on this site.  Moreover the OP has asked other questions, related to his title question but not covered by the linked to one.

Related: After starting a PhD in Mathematics, I realized I am more interested in Statistics - can I transfer to a Statistics PhD?


text:
Is it OK to edit my undergraduate thesis results?
I'm current an undergraduate student working on a research project for my thesis.
In my project, I obtained quite a large number of inconsistent or strange result for my lab analysis of my samples and I just couldn't get a reliable or sound result for my analysis. I have been struggling in repeating the experiments for a prolonged time and done a lot of attempts, yet I still have not got a good result for it.
While my viva session and thesis submission date is approaching nearer, I am really stressed and have thought about modifying my lab results so that it is more presentable for my thesis since time is running out.
However, I really am not sure whether that is it ok for me to do so. I got a guilty feeling that I am doing something that is against my morality for submitting results that are not 100% originated  from my own work. On the other hand, if I report my original results that didn't look appealing for my supervisor, I'm also afraid that she would require me to redo my whole experiment and delay my graduation date.
I really hope I can get an advice from a reliable researcher or student about my case.

It's a bit unclear as to what you're asking. It does at the moment read like you are asking whether or not you should falsify your experimental data; that's probably not what you intended to ask, is it?

Ya I was asking whether would it be ok if i edit my experimental results(sorry for the uncleared question) however after hearing ff524's advice I think I will still report my original results and try my best to justify in my discussion

Falsifying your data is not "editing your results". Don't mislead or justify it to yourself like that. It's dishonest, harmful to the community, and could ruin your career. Don't do it, ever.

thank you so much to all of your advices...I truly understand the consequences of falsifying results as it is against the ethical issues in the educational research field...now I clearly know what I have to do. Many thanks!

I am really stressed up and conceived the notation of modifying my lab results so that it is more presentable for my thesis since time is running out.

No, no, no
Never do this - it is highly unethical. If your deceit is discovered, you are likely to lose your degree, and may possibly face other consequences. (For example, if you have a job based on that degree, you may lose the job when the degree is revoked.)
It is always disappointing when a project doesn't work out the way you hope it will, but there is always that risk when you set out to do something that isn't completely straightforward.  See, for example, this related question: What to do when research leads to poor results?
Even experiments that are "known" to work (in the sense that someone claims to have previously achieved "good results" with that experiment) can't always be repeated reliably. See Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science, in which the authors attempt to repeat 100 published psychology experiments, and "replicated the original result" in fewer than half of them.
The correct response is to
write your thesis giving all the details of your work as it happened: the background, the experiment design, and the results. This serves to document your efforts, and may prove to be useful to other people who might try the same experiment in the future. You may also explain why you think the experiment may not have yielded the results you expect, and possibly propose a new experiment (if you have any ideas for improving your work).
Note that even when scientific findings do not match our expectations, the study is still considered a success (of sorts) if we can learn something from it. Even if what we learn is "this experiment does not yield consistent results in many cases." In contrast, false results might look nice, but are worse than worthless.
A lack of "good results" does not necessarily doom your thesis. To quote another answer:

My PhD thesis was trying to demonstrate the nature of the relationship between stress and psoriasis symptoms (many people say "stress worsens psoriasis" - it's taken as a given truth, but it's never been empirically demonstrated). I was trying to answer things like what kind of stress, how long does it take, does it differ between people? I never found any evidence that stress did worsen psoriasis. Nor that psoriasis worsened stress (or any other psychological symptom).
A PhD is an educational process. One should demonstrate that one has learned. The most important thing about a PhD is showing what you know, what you have learned, and what you understand. If anyone gets to the end of a PhD and says "Well, those results were all positive, just as I expected", they've learned little. At the end of your PhD (or any research project) you should want to start again, and this time do it properly.

The excerpt above is about a PhD, but applies at all levels of study.

If I report my original results that didn't look appealing for my supervisor, I'm also afraid and doubt that she would require me to redo my whole experiment and delay my graduation date.

You should talk to your supervisor now - don't surprise her the week before your submission date and tell her that the experiment failed! Talk to your supervisor and ask for her advice on how to proceed with your experiment. Presumably she has more experience than you in this area and may be able to suggest a solution you haven't thought of. (And she probably does not want to delay your graduation any more than you do...)

Thank u so much for your advice! I also really don't want to edit my results as my workings will be contributed to the educational world. I also realize it will be unethical to do so, so I will try my best to dicuss my results in my discussion and tell my supervisor about it

You should talk to your supervisor now - don't surprise her the week before your submission date and tell her that the experiment failed! Totally nails it!

Have you considered asking your supervisor for help in this case? That's what a supervisor, especially on undergraduate levels, is there for: Advising you, when you need it. I have supervised several Bachelor Theses so far and cases like yours happen more often than you think.
In some cases I could point to some literature which had similar issues. There the students often found helpful insights which showed them what might have caused the somewhat "strange" results. It also helped them a lot to know that they're not the only one struggling with that particular issue.
From your question I concluded that you have no idea yet what your problem actually is (you just have not "reliable" and "sound" results). I suggest you do further analyses together with your supervisor and see if you can pinpoint the problem.
Maybe you also simply found out that other people's results were wrong. Maybe the experiment is not supposed to show their results but yours are actually correct. There might be reasons why the look not "reliable" and "sound" to you.
Things like this can happen. Empirical results are empirical results. If the outcome differs from the expectation even though the experiment has been carefully conducted then the probability is high that the expectation was wrong.

+1 "Talk to your advisor" is the best solution to a significant number of questions on this site.

It just seems to me the most logical step to take first :) It was for me as a student and now, as a supervisor, I even ask from time to time if my advise is needed. Research is teamwork in every area.

Submit your results as they are. When you give your plan, your hypothesis, your procedure, then say "But, nothing really turned up.", you gain respect. Yeah, she may want you to repeat everything if she sees something you missed, but that's sort of the point!

You should never falsify data. It is literally the highest sin you can commit in science.
Bear in mind that in my lab (and likely yours too) we have and use bachelors and masters theses as reference documents on various methods and apparatus that were worked on by past students. If you falsify your data, your academic dishonesty can have real effects and unwittingly waste a lot of the group's time.

literally the highest sin you can commit in science - Hmm, arguably not the highest sin. See e.g. Tuskegee syphilis experiment, Nazi human experimentation, Unit 731, etc. But I agree that falsifying data is Very Very Bad.

@ff524: Falsified data regarding side effects of vaccines has killed a few too, although not as many as your examples

Maybe the worst scientific sin?


text:
Why are my submissions not accepted by top conferences, while similar papers from others are accepted?
I'm doing my PhD in computer science. I had a few tries for top rank conferences like IJCAI, CVPR and ICML but my paper was rejected from them and consequently I sent the papers to second tier conferences for the sake of having publications.
However when I compare my work with some accepted papers (in previous years or current year) in those conferences, I see similar technical level or novelty in them comparing to mines.
For example reviewers more often mentioned I just added something to the pre-existed approaches or combined already existing things from the literature to shape an algorithm, which I noticed is a common case notable number of papers in the top computer science conferences.
One thing I do not have in my papers is bringing unnecessary but sophisticated math jargon to show something important is happening. For example, I noticed in other's papers although the contribution was for instance adding an extra objective term in the optimization framework, they used complicated algebraic representations or visualization techniques to related their contribution to some bigger underlying phenomena! But the short answer is they did it because it obviously should make the outcome result better.
From another point I'm not sure if I try another top conference (with a new work) and my paper gets rejected, then would it damage my or my supervisor's reputation in the field?
So although I still have great enthusiasm to try for the next relevant top conference, I got a feeling that I'm missing an important ingredient from the recipe!
PS: My advisor is not so competent in this regard and I'm among the first group of his PhD students and you can guess the rest.

What does your advisor say? (You did ask your advisor, right?)

I did but i think he is not so experienced regarding the above as i think a couple of the rejections could have been foreseen by him before submitting the work! Nevertheless, he is so knowledgeable in theoretical aspects of the work!

Do you have any insight into the scores, e.g., was it always a clear reject, or where there disagreements between reviewers?

If your advisor doesn't care and/or is incompetent, find a new one.

Generally speaking, you are biased when you compare your own work to other competing work.  So your work may look better to you than it actually is.

@GEdgar I agree to you to some extent, however i think i should present my work in a much stronger way.

How is relating to the bigger picture unnecessary?! It is one of the first things I look for when I review. It shows that the authors know what they are talking about, why the problem is interesting, how it relates to other problems, how they can be useful to other problems, and provides a background for the phenomenology of the problem. "Adding an extra term" is generally only useful as long as you can provide a reasonable explanation to why it works, even if it was initially discovered by pure chance, given that it helps me understand its limitations.

I have noticed the same in other fields, sometimes there are some very complex/fancy statistics that are there for what seems to be looking smart but the real reason for their use is not clear.

One thing I do not have in my papers is bringing unnecessary but sophisticated math jargon to show something important is happening. For example, I noticed in other's papers although the contribution was for instance adding an extra objective term in the optimization framework, they used complicated algebraic representations or visualization techniques to related their contribution to some bigger underlying phenomena! But the short answer is they did it because it obviously should make the outcome result better.

I can think of several ways to interpret this observation, some more charitable than others.

Computer science research papers are not about the results per se, but about the techniques developed to attain those results. It's possible that in the revirewers' eyes, the apparent connection to the larger underlying phenomenon is the main contribution of the paper.  The main contribution is not merely that the outcome is better, but at least an attempted explanation of why the outcome is better.
People are bad judges of the quality their own research results. More to the point: Your opinion of your research is irrelevant; only your peers' opinions actually matter.  If they find your papers less interesting than others, then by definition your papers are less interesting.
Emerson was wrong.  The world will not beat a path to your door if you merely build a better mousetrap.  You have to sell your results.  For your papers to be accepted, they must follow the cultural expectations of your audience.  If the IJCAI/ICML/CVPR audience expects a certain level of mathematical sophistication, then papers that do not display that sophistication are less likely to be accepted, even if that sophistication is unnecessary.
It is very easy to confuse mathematical depth/complexity with importance/difficulty. Top theoretical computer science conferences have a reputation for preferring more mathematically "difficult" papers to papers using more elementary techniques, and lots of reviewers assume without justification that any result that appears straightforward in retrospect must have been easy to derive.  But unless someone proves that P=NP, "trivial" is different from "nondeterministically trivial".
Because CVPR, ICML, and IJCAI are enormous conferences with low acceptance rates, acceptance decisions have high variance.  Given the breadth and complexity of the field, the ridiculous number of submissions, and the limited time for reviews, it is impossible for the program committee to make fully informed judgements about every submission.  There is an element of randomness even at smaller conferences, but for larger prestigious conferences, the randomness overwhelms the actual "signal".  In 2014, NIPS ran an experiment with two independent program committees; most papers accepted by one committee were rejected by the other.  It amazes me that anyone found this result surprising.
PC members are apes; they do apey things. As in any other large community, there are sub-communities within machine learning that prefer their own papers to others.  Even though submissions are blinded, reviewers can identify tribal affiliation—if only subconsciously—by writing style, citation patterns, choice of method, choice of data set, or choice of evaluation metrics.  If you're not in the right tribe, your papers are less likely to be accepted.

What does PC member stand for?

PC = program committee, the group charged with deciding which of far too many submissions to accept for publication in the proceedings and presentation at the conference.

I know you deliberately exaggerated the situation, but why call them apes?

@padawan Humans are apes.

they used complicated algebraic representations or visualization techniques to related their contribution to some bigger underlying phenomena! But the short answer is they did it because it obviously should make the outcome result better.

This (relating your contribution to the bigger picture) is an important part in papers in our fields, so I guess in yours, too. The reviewers/readers don't know the bigger picture of your specific research, you need to tell them. Sounds like you don't, whereas others - while doing similar quality research - do.

One thing I've experienced is not to 'overfit' to accepted papers that have been just published. It is very easy to look at a published paper and say "this isn't really very novel! I can do this too!", and then proceed to use this as a benchmark for minimum viable novelty. I also noticed when aiming at the borderline, papers tend to be rejected more. Moreover, there is also the time element. Technical novelty is w.r.t to time.
Then again, I don't think it's healthy to assume one's work is up to the novelty bar. You may think your work is actually novel but it might not. Reviews and acceptance/rejection results tell the truth, to some extent. There is some variance in results and sometimes luck is not on your side. But I always believe a reasonably okay paper should get into a top conference after 1-2 more tries after it has been rejected once.
What kinds of scores do you normally get? There are many different extents to how a paper gets rejected. There is a big difference between 1 strong accept + 2 reject and 3 x weak rejects.

This question has its answer in the responses from the reviewers.
At the end, reviewers and the editor are the ones who decide whether a submission is good enough to appear in a conference/proceedings/journal. If they write that you added something to the pre-existing approaches, then it means that your submission lacks novelty.
Also, maybe unnecessary but sophisticated math jargon is the formal definition of the problem whose absence causes terrible ambiguities.
Your reputation being damaged is a very rare case. However, if you keep submitting papers that lack novelty and technical language, then you might be blacklisted. Your supervisor's reputation has nothing to do with this.

As i tried to say, i noticed many cases of accepted papers in the same or equivalent top conferences with same level of technical novelty, especially adding something to the pre-existed approached in the literature!

But unfortunately you are not the judge of technicality and novelty, reviewers are.


text:
Post Doc application form in France asks for very personal details, is it normal?
I'm trying to get an engineering post doc which I will conduct at a company's R&D labs, however I need to jump through all of the sponsoring university's hoops. I just received their application form and some of the questions are very personal. I thought such questions would be illegal in any European country. Are questions like your marital status, number and name of your children, date, place of birth...normal?
The number of ways a candidate maybe discriminated against based on their responses would be exponential.

Is this a public university? That would be strange.

As a french person, this is not that strange in France, although completely unethical. There is a huge discrimination based on age and perhaps other things too, and you can't do anything about it because it is already deeply "settled". I am disappointed by the country I was born in.

Are you sure it has to do with your post doc?  Sounds like immigration check and stay permit.

You (or a secretary you were in contact with) probably misunderstood something.  These questions are entirely normal and expected when preparing your contract.  They will come when you got an offer, not when you are applying.

I'm mainly trying to understand France, hence the question (I have seen similar things in Denmark). I'm not quite sure what's going on. I have an application with one French university and the whole process was very normal but I would like this one because I can be in the industry. The institution in question is very highly respected. The application form also asked for my CV, copy of passport, nationality...which is normal to check eligibility but I think the questions should be separate and secrete. Although in all honesty I work in academia and I don't expect professionalism in general.

In Brazil, this information is not only normal but also mandated by most regimental agencies. Sometimes you even need to bring proof that you vaccinated your kids before joining a business or an academic program.

Are you applying to a position in a restricted environment (e.g. defense related or closely related team) ? For some positions the lab may need an approval of the ministry of research which investigates the applicant background before allowing someone to actually be hired (in my lab it's called "FSD": fonctionnaire sécurité défense / defense-security staff). However I don't know if they require all these personal details as I've never experienced this process myself.

I guess they erroneously sent you a form to prepare a contract, not an application. They'll need that information to properly register you with health insurance, tax authorities, etc.

My guesstimate (from a German point of view) is also that you got a set of forms for preparing the contract. My advise would be to ask whether you got the right set of forms as this looks to you like forms for preparing the contract rather than forms for the application/candidate selection process. After all, if you got the wrong forms, you may be missing the right ones... (Or, could it be that they already decided to hire you? And in consequence try so speed up burocracy by sending you all forms at once - particularly if two institutions are involved?)

Another possibility is that parts of the form are irrelevant for you and they didn't tell you that they don't expect you to fill this in. Also here the solution is: ask them. (In Italy, I once got a social insurance form whose relevance neither I nor my Italian colleagues understood. It turned out to be irrelevant, when they gave me the form they just "forgot" to mention that all they wanted me to fill in was my address and social insurance data and as that is asked on all forms, they just gave me some form.)

@cbeleites I think it is to prepare the contract as I applied for the job based on recommendation (I haven't actually seen the job description - I did the exact job for my PhD with the same team) but I have not been offered the job officially which makes sense. I have lots of applications out as I'm bored but this one has been the strangest.

@strnk - No SC required for the position (I won't clear it - got rejected from a French rocket tech company on failing SC - never asked such questions).

No it is not normal. These question are not posed by an university office in France ( the same probably applies in most of Europe , surely in Italy and Austria as well) as far as professional competence and attitude must be evaluated.
It is likely that the university has provided you with formular emanating from immigration offices, inherent to getting a stay in France as prerequisite or concomitant requisite to obtain a post doc position.
If you are EU citizen than our work laws and workers protecting laws are indeed in danger if not already totally dismantled...

I'm a British Citizen, so for now I don't need a visa (maybe - could change any minute based on the politicians mood these days).
The form should have been completed after an offer was made and should not have required my CV!

When applying to US and UK, I remember answering questions regarding to race, disability etc. Of course, it was mentioned that this information is collected only for ensuring that there is no discrimination (for this, you need statistics), and probably the people deciding who to hire did not see that (I hope). So yes, it seems to be normal that you may be asked some weird questions.

Usually, such questions would be clearly marked as optional, and for statistical purposes only. Furthermore, they would be to ensure that certain protected classes of people (e.g. women and racial minorities) are not discriminated against. Marital status and names of children would not be appropriate for such surveys.

I believe those questions are optional in the US.

In fact this is normal. In France, public employees can have more money if they have children. Wife and children health care can also be managed by the university.
So university will need all information about your familly. It's not legal to use it to decide to take you or not, but you have to give it if they hire you.

It is correct that family has benefits but I agree with Najib Idrissi. In  my case my private situation had not to bee discussed before hiring.


text:
Main author might want to exclude me from the list of authors
About a year ago, a foreign researcher invited me to co-author a review paper with him. He had already a 50 page long draft that needed editing and improving. After I was done with it (literature review, re-writing big parts of the text, adding big parts to the text, enlarging the bibliography) the paper was 70 pages long; submitted, accepted, in press. So far so good.
A few months later, he invited me to co-author a follow-up review, to which I happily agreed. This  time his draft was of a poorer quality, so in fact I re-wrote it from scratch, using the first version as a skeleton or table of contents.
After I finished and sent him the paper, he stopped responding to my e-mails since several weeks (I don't know him personally). I fear he might want to submit the paper without including me as co-author (it's a justified fear, but I'll refrain from describing the details of our collaboration).
What can I do if this will indeed happen? In its current form, the paper is partially my intellectual property, and I don't allow to publish it without me. I have all the source files and e-mails regarding this work. Could I write to the publisher explaining the situation and demand to withdraw the paper?

How can you write to the publisher? You don't know whether he's submitted the manuscript. Let alone whom to.

Have you considered submitting a preprint to a public archive like the arxiv, biorxiv or any other that is used in your field? The preprint timestamp can be used as proof of authorship (i.e. the timestamp of your preprint would predate any publication out of your control). Of course, the preprint should contain both his name and yours. Under this course of action, there are other questions that become relevant, like this and this.

How comes that a foreign researcher you don't know personally invites you to co-author a paper? Do you have any common relations?
Why do you think its a justified fear? I think more details there could also help the question.

Can't you use your email based communication as an authorship proof in case he decides to take the step of publishing without you?

If he's stopped responding to your emails and you don't know him personally, it could be very difficult for you to figure out where and when he may submit this paper, and without that information, you can't contact the publisher to explain your position. It may be wise to maintain records (ideally timestamped) of your email correspondence with him, and of your version of the paper.
If you have these artifacts saved, and you later see the paper without your name attached in a journal somewhere, then you can contact the publisher to explain the situation, and provide your timestamped records as evidence that the paper contains your intellectual property.
I would recommend continuing to try and contact the professor. If you're very concerned about them publishing without your name, you could email him and ask that if he publishes the paper, not to use the version you wrote, and not to attach your name to it (save any and all of this correspondence). In this case, you would lose the opportunity to be published, but you would also retain your intellectual property and refrain from having your name put on a paper published without your knowledge.


text:
PhD requires technology - is this something I will have to fund?
I'm applying to do a PhD in Computer Science at a UK university. While I'm up for some funding I've been told it's very competitive so I shouldn't count on it. That's fine, and I'm prepared to self fund.
However my PhD proposal will require wearable tech, and my supervisor had advised that I think about having a group of 15 or so in the initial test stages. Does anyone have any experience of whether or not I'll have to purchase this myself, or if this is something the university will help cover the cost of? I appreciate it's probably the former, but it's something I need to know prior to starting.
On top of the PhD costs it could easily be another £3000 or so in order to buy all the tech - so I'll need to work out whether I can afford it!

As an aside to the answers, you could potentially also contact the manufacturer detailing your project and see if they would be willing to provide a reduced cost/bulk order for your research. That would make it easier to cover the costs.

You may not need to purchase the equipment, it could be possible to select a test group who already own the devices you need, of course depending on what it is exactly you are researching.

@Compass even better than "reduced cost", they might sponsor you, if they think this could be a nice advertisement for them.

@Lohoris That's a separate legal issue that becomes a possible conflict of interest thing that would require a lawyer. A reduced cost without any expectations is much easier to argue as no conflict of interest than an actual "Hey, Inlet sponsored us!"

As a student, you should not be required to fund equipment purchases yourself.  Rather, it is your supervisor's responsibility to work with you to scope a project that is within the funding that they wish to allocate to it.  So if your supervisor wants to do a study with 15 people, your supervisor needs to have a sufficient budget to support it.  Otherwise, you might end up, say, doing your work in simulation instead, which is much cheaper but less convincing in its results.
Now, some students do buy small things themselves, especially if it is a low-cost "toy" that they want to play with themselves (e.g., a Raspberry Pi or a phone sensor pack) and they don't want to go through the delay and hassle of university purchasing.  That's an exception, however, and certainly not to be expected for a multi-user study.

When it's the supervisor's responsibility to scope a project that is within available funding, this may easily result in requiring to significantly alter the topic to fit the funding limits. If funding is not available, then a completely reasonable result may be "to do X properly, you'd need a sufficiently large study group and $X of tech that we don't have; so if you can't self fund it then you can't do proposal X and you'll have to do Y or Z instead even if that's not what you want or intended when applying".

is this based on experience at a UK university, whilst doing a self funded phd ? As I think its totally wrong to assume that (speaking as someone who ha sbeen through a couple of funding rigmaroles with UK universities). And on top of that, the ethical question is there - if the PhD is self funded, why should the university pay for any equipment, thats the point of self funding isn't it - actually providing the funds required to complete the phd ?

@NimChimpsky There is a fundamental ethical problem with a professor setting an equipment budget that a student is then required to pay for, due to the power imbalance in the relationship.  A student can have a reasonable expectation of the commitment they are making when choosing a self-funded Ph.D.  But if a professor says, "By the way, you also need to pay an extra £100,000 for equipment" that seems to me to be a clear abuse of power, because the professor is not suffering the financial consequences and has such a wide degree of freedom in scoping the project.

@jakebeal "with a professor setting an equipment budget " that has not happened here though.  Its the OP who is setting the requirements and self funding.  Have you got any experience with self funded PhDs in the UK ? No one has said by the way its $100,000. The OP has stated its £3k, and its in their self funded proposal. You are answering a question, that has not been asked.

@NimChimpsky It is not the OP setting the requirements: the OP says "my supervisor had advised that I think about having a group of 15 or so."  To me, the principle of not using students as a substitute for funding agencies is very important for avoiding abuse of students, which I illustrated with the £100k figure.  You, on the other hand, have accepted what I find to be a fundamentally unethical principle, and are just haggling about the price.

@jakebeal so just to be clear, the professor has not set an equipment budget (they have stated the min requirements for a reliable study in their eyes); and you don't have any experience of self funded PhD's in the UK ?  "The principle of not using students as a substitute for funding" - so you are simply against self funding entirely. Interesting, but not really relevant to the OP's problem, as they have clearly stated they want to self fund. Self funding is quite common/generally accepted in the UK.

@NimChimpsky Self-funding does not only happen in the UK, it happens in the US as well, and there is nothing wrong with self-funding in principle.  Where I see the problem is when equipment comes into the picture, since the scope of equipment requirements can be adjusted much more easily by an abusive PI than the scope of time requirements, which usually have much more oversight from the department and higher authorities in a university.

@jakebeal Its a self funded phd, the OP will have to find the money for the equipment, otherwise its not self funded. Your answer is wrong for the UK.  Why you have bought abusive PI's in to this I don't know, sounds liek the OP has a perfectly good relationship with supervisor.

Typically you would not pay for the research equipment you need out of your own pocket in order to complete your studies. I would establish that this is the case up front with your potential advisor before you get started. It would be pretty unusual to put the costs of doing the research on a student.

Since your potential supervisor has said that the university funding shall not be enough, I am translating that to no funding available. Depending on the university many options are available for you. If you are studying at any Scottish university, then Interface Scotland can help you. To get funding, your research has to be tied with a business organisation. A business can also initiate Knowledge Transfer Protocol (KTP) support and then you can do the research for it.
Apart from these two options, you can approach some IT firms if they want to fund your research and have the IP. What strikes me most is about your motivation for self-funding. Universities generally provide three-years funding, but your PhD research can take four or five years to complete if you do not have an 'original contribution' by three years' time. You need to calculate that and think how will you feel when you complete PhD in 2020. You shall have less savings if any, and you shall be offered a starting salary of a lecturer. It is only financially viable if you finance your studies through a scholarship for the first three years. Otherwise, self-funding can be a great challenge. My, recommendation is you calculate every expense in Excel till 2020. This shall clarify your future course of action.

Contrary to the other answers, I think you should be prepared for the possibility of having to fund this yourself.
Money for this kind of equipment has to come out of some budget/pot of money somewhere. Typically funded PhDs come as part of an external research grant or are perhaps funded internally by a university, but either way equipment costs should have been considered as part of that funding.
If you're self-funding your own PhD then there's no obvious place like that to look for the money. It might be that your supervisor can find some money from her own research grants or you can apply to somewhere for the money. Or it might be that it's effectively funded by your fees and the university/department will be prepared to pay for it directly. But I don't think there are any strong guarantees and if the equipment will be necessary for your PhD then you should either clarify this up front or come prepared to pay for it yourself.

this should be the correct answer

The fact its a self funded PHD means yes I would think you would be expected to pay for equipment. I think every case would be different in such circumstances ... but I can't imagine many university budget holders being prepared to give you money for nothing.  However, I could quite easily see a supervisor/dept entering into some quid pro quo arrangement (eg tutor undergrads for 10 weeks and we will get you X laptops or whatever).
Definitely don't assume it should be paid for, you are self funding so you need to arrange funding for everything.  I have to assume that the people posting answers here to the contrary have experience with academic projects where the funding was from the university/research grant where the opposite is true.
(I've worked/studied at four different academic research institutes all based in the UK).


text:
Writing theory section of thesis - feels like I am just copying
I am doing a PhD in physics / applied math and have just started writing the theory section. A large-ish part (5-10 pages, estimated) will be setting the scene with some theoretical tools that I am using but did not invent. These tools will eventually be used as the basis for analysing data.
I will say the word so you don't have to think it: plagiarism. I have absolutely no desire to plagiarize so am very careful about citing my sources - however while writing I get the feeling that I am simply copying off of others.
Question, in two parts:

Can anyone give a strategy for how to write a theory section and make it ``your own'' while clearly citing relevant material?
Is this feeling actually normal and am I just over-reacting?

If this were the definition of plagiarism, then the author of every textbook or thesis would be guilty. There are a lot of choices to do even when you are only presenting material: choosing what to present and what to omit, adopting the best notation, choosing what to prove and how to do it so that the introduction is self-contained... So your introduction will likely not be simply the copy of a textbook, but it will contain lots of intellectual work coming from your neurons. (That said, you still have to cite your sources and give proper attribution, of course.)

Dumb question: What is or might be wrong if most of the section is copied as long as you cite correctly?

Btw do you really need to write those 5-10 pages? I mean you're not going to introduce limits to someone reading a undergrad paper on linear algebra. Maybe a little review but I'm not sure that be in the intro. I think that you could put the review in the middle whenever the need arises. Perhaps the length of that portion depends on the topics involved. Why not ask your adviser? Oh also no desire to plagiarise is not the same as desire to not plagiarise :P

Aren't we all are not just »dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants«? And ergo "plagiarising" in one way or another, as if every - not cited - thought really is an original one..

@BenCrowell, that's a bold idea! I think the most reasonable thing to do is to write this section as the methods are somewhat new and not widely known in my field.

Although I'm not in "physics/applied-math", but, rather, "math", I see the same or similar issue arise. Let's consider the point that, by this year, the "context/background/set-up" has very likely been highly optimized, both for effectiveness and for succinctness. Nothing wasted, nothing superfluous, etc. So it is likely to be hard to "improvise" much on its description without making it worse in some way. This may be the case even down to small notational conventions, wording, etc.
So, be absolutely scrupulous in citing, and try to have it all in your own head so that you can write it yourself (not literally copying), even while citing, ... and remarking something like "we recall some standard facts/ideas/set-up, e.g., from [X]."

I agree, but I don't like the wording of the last comment. If you write those things from your head, you are not recalling them from [X]. Instead, I would write something along the lines of "We recall some standard facts/ideas/set-up. The reader might also consult the expository sections of [X], [Y] or [Z]."

@tomasz: If you "write from your head", how on Earth do you know they're actually your own words, and not an unconscious quoting from a memory of something you read?

Dumb question: What is or might be wrong if most of the section is copied as long as you cite correctly?

@BCLC Not necessarily plagiarism in the strictest sense, but it is generally frowned upon to copy large sections and might actually violate the original author's copyright if it is deemed too extensive to fall under Fair Use.

@jamesqf: I don't usually memorise sentences, but ideas. I suppose I could, in an amazing coincidence, use exactly the same phrasing for some parts, but I don't see how I could avoid this sort of "quoting", short of trying to match what I have written to various sources. And that is just silly. Of course, there are also some basic elements which one can only phrase in so many ways, but that doesn't make it a quotation.

Of course, I am talking about standard material you have probably read/heard about in a bunch of different places, which you understand unconsciously. Using standard phrasing for standard things is not a citation and certainly not plagiarism, as long as you make it clear what it is. This is distinct from more novel ideas, for which you have a definitive and fairly recent source.

Given that you've almost finished a PhD in your field, it's fair to say that you should have a solid grasp of the basic definitions and concepts you're trying to write up at the moment.  So I suggest you do the following.  Close all your textbooks and papers and write that section on your own, without looking at any other sources while you're writing it.  That should ensure that you express the ideas mostly in your own words.  Then, go back and check your version against the standard references to make sure you didn't get anything wrong and that you've included any relevant citations. If you see that one of the standard sources has explained one of the concepts much better than you did,
consider explicitly quoting that source: e.g., "Symplectic widgets were defined by Widgetmeister [Wid83] as [...]".
At the end of the day, though, you don't need to worry too much about this. As long as you cite sources clearly, I don't think anyone's going to complain that your description of the standard material looks a lot like other peoples' descriptions of the same thing, especially if it's not word-for-word the same. Standard material always looks standard and a lot of readers will skip over it anyway. The real contribution of your thesis is in the later sections.

Yep. You need to have mastered this stuff and teaching it is one way to prove it. Nor will the practice re-expressing the basic hurt: you're likely to do a certain amount of that as you go forward, anyway.

This is actually very simple ethically:
You did research work which - by your description - is experimental. You ran experiments, you're analyzing data, you're making conclusions based on the data.
Your research contribution is your conclusions. (and possibly your raw results and experimental setup as well.)
The theory section is not plagiarized because you're not claiming this is your original (theoretical) work. You're summing up what other people have done and discussed.
That's it. Other answers have good suggestions regarding how to approach writing this section.
PS - Sometimes, the cogent presentation of the theoretical background can itself be considered a contribution. But this happens more in textbooks or in review papers, less in theses.

This one gets my vote. As long as your contribution is your own, the background setting may, and usually should, reference the work of others -- as long as it's clear where you are borrowing from, borrow freely.

If you feel that you are copying too much from "standard" sources (in your subfield), chances are you are. Keep in mind that your audience is mostly people in your field (generally), they should be familiar with the area. Just cite (the best/a few) reference(s), give the result you need (for benefit of somebody from outside the field stumbling on your thesis, or as a reminder to others), and move on.
Most of the "underlying theory" discussion should be more or less contained in the chapter on state of the art anyway. There detailed discussion of what has been done, were it fell short or left problems open is the bread and butter, and will be spiked with copious references.

David Richerby's answer is a good one. In addition, you can make it more your own by adding some commentary. How do the theoretical tools that you are using compare with others that have been proposed? What are their weaknesses? What are the alternatives? Why have you chosen these particular tools for your particular problem?

This is a totally normal...ish :)
Once upon a time, scientists were almost universally humble, and for a person to single-handedly contributing even a speck of new information to the body of information that humanity had accumulated over millennia was considered quite the achievement.
As Charles H. Duell, Commissioner of US patent office in 1899 famously said:

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."

It is only in recent times (but still before you and I were born) that the notion of a "rockstar-scientist" existed. Before that, Scientists were typically wealthy noblemen who dabbled in Science because they didn't need to work for a living. So the idea of doing science as a profession also wasn't really anything like it is these days.
So why do you feel like you are plagiarising the work of others when setting the scene in your PhD thesis? Speaking from my experience of currently writing a PhD Thesis in Biology, it may be because you are internally conflicted that on the one hand we are but little cogs in a big engine; yet on the other, if we don't make ourselfs out to be the biggest/bestest cog ever, we fear we'll be replaced by ones that are.
Yet the format of a thesis has not changed in centuries - and perhaps that's a good thing :)

I don't think the OP is actually worried about "plagarizing", but that someone else could see it and accuse him/her of plagarism.  In the witch hunt atmosphere that seems to prevail these days, you don't have to be guilty, just an accusation is enough to cause problems.

@jamesqf, that's a pretty good diagnosis :-)

Totally agree jamesqf - but the issue there is not the witch-hunting itself per se, it's the OPs perception that someone will actually call them out on it. While all the other answers give advice on not plagerizing, like the number 1 answer of "try to remember everything", what i'm saying here is that it's all in his head. He needs to worry less when he's doing nothing wrong :)

These are similar questions any researcher faces while writing articles/ publications/ thesis. But what I feel different is the perspective of looking the problem. Maybe everyone's trying to solve the same thing now and then. Certainly, there are many contributions which have lead us to pursue the field you are in today. We indeed have to cite adequately as the future researchers would see the origins of our work. This is also  establishing yourself in the field you are working along with established contributors.
What matters most is the following:

How do you show the problem/How did you see the problem?
Your perspective to tackle the issue with all necessary tools. You should clearly put your ideas to work for connecting all the dots.


text:
Is there a pre-print server for building physics papers?
I recently submitted a pre-print (about heating control algorithms for buildings) to arXiv.org, under General Physics, but it was rejected as being off-topic for that server.
I tried to find a pre-print server specialising in Building Physics research but couldn't find any. Wikipedia doesn't list anything.
Is there a pre-print server that is suitable for that kind of publication?

Building physics?  Do you mean civil engineering?

Not necessarily. The journal I submitted the paper to is "Energy and Buildings" but I don't know if could call that civil engineering.

@lindelof I would consider most topics in this area to be closer to engineering than physics.

@lindelof This question may help you. Preprint services other than arXiv (for other fields)

No, there isn't yet a pre-print server for building physics, although some people have successfully smuggled such papers onto arxiv.
Furthermore, there aren't really any heavyweight open-access building-physics journals, and established journals in the field haven't been quick to embrace open-access.
There is the option of producing internal working papers and circulating it without publication, to get some of the benefits of pre-print, without risking a publisher's refusal. However, it's not easy to reach a very broad audience this way, nor a new audience.
Building-physics papers do often span multiple subjects - we often cross-over, for example into health, for example, when we look at condensation and mould, radon, or dust mites; so there might be other pre-print archives that we can use.
And, although it's a completely different thing, there's always the possibility to air early thoughts on the building-physics tags on the Physics and Sustainability Stack Exchanges, which can be a way to get a bit of an airing, and reach a different audience to that reached by circulation of working papers.


text:
How to know if my work is worth a paper?
I work in a computer science research lab as an engineer. I work in field A, but I got really fascinated by field B and I worked in my free time on an idea in field B.
I want to pursue a PhD in the end of my contract so I'm thinking about publishing results. So far, I have zero publication. I may get a chance to write a paper in field A, but if I can also in field B, I'd have better chances to get a PhD I like.
My question is : how do I get opinions about my work in field B?
I implemented a software which works, does not beat state of the art but has exciting potential in my opinion. I combine an old idea with a brand new idea. It's quite a lot of work and effort. I was thinking about presenting it in a blog and publishing the code in order to get feedback and become a bit more known (i'm done with all the figures and experiments). If it is a success, I wanted to write a paper (and publish in arXiv) straight after. I'm afraid that if the idea is good, I will be potentially missing out on citations which could help me become more known. Also, if I don't write a paper and just publish stuff on my blog, I don't prove that I "play by the rules" and that I can write properly, edit LaTeX, submit papers, etc... A third possibility would be to ask a researcher which is concerned by my project, show him what I did and talk with him before taking any initiative.
I don't want anything to interfere with my current work so I have not talked with the team here about my side work. We have been delayed quite a bit and I don't want to give the false impression that it's because of my side work.
What do you think?
edit: MJeffryes commented that arXiv is not a journal. Yes, I thought that at least, publishing in arXiv allows to get citations (whereas a blog cannot be cited, I guess), and then submit it to conferences/journals.

"I wanted to write a paper (and publish in arXiv) straight after" arXiv is not a publisher, and papers uploaded to it are not considered to be published. If you actually want to get published you will (since you are in computer science) need to submit to a reputable conference and present your work there.

It's probably still worth putting the paper on arXiv though

presenting it in a blog and publishing the code: bad bad idea. Not everyone has ethical concerns, that the best way to have someone use your code and publish the idea... Do the opposite: build up experiments, send a paper, then open the code.

Talk to somebody in Field B! That's the best way.
Make a contact. To find "the right somebody" to talk to, start by describing your idea very vaguely (so nobody steals your idea) to somebody you know and trust in that field, or who has an interest or connection to it. Tell them you're hoping to publish, and ask if they know anyone in Field B who knows more about the topic or might be willing to talk with you. Invariably, your friend will give you a name or two, and you can do the same with those contacts. Repeat until you find the right person. I've had great success in my university with this approach.
Perhaps you could find somebody in Field B who would be willing to coauthor with you. They might even have funding to publish in a peer-reviewed journal, though that's a long shot. Publishing in a peer-reviewed journal would probably improve your visibility.
Good luck! If you do get it published, cone back here and link to it. I'd love to see your idea.

But you don't have to be overly protective and concerned about someone stealing your idea. Typically, I wouldn't be worried about explaining your idea (even with details) to your professor or some other faculty member.