text:
Did I mess up my chance to get into grad school?
Throughout my undergrad, I was solely focused on grades, university life, and getting a job. While I did talk to professors outside of class, whether related to class work or my own 'math research' (a hobby), I don't feel I have enough of a connection with any of them to ask for a good letter of accommodation for my grad school application. I'm honestly unsure what everyone else did. Maybe I was suppose to have worked with a professor in their research/teaching? I didn't even take those courses like "Topics in __" that have a small amount of independent study in my first three years. I guess I sort of thought I was suppose really get to know the professors and perhaps dip my feet into the research world in 4th year.
Well, it's 4th year now, and it was really hard to get close to any professors with covid19 in the shadows. I have only communicated with them through email and faceless zoom chats. Is it really that bad to get recommendations from professors that don't know you that well? I do have good grades, but perhaps not good enough to scream them to the heavens in some professor's one sentence recommendation...
Edit: This is for a university in Canada

If you got good grades you should be able to get good letters.  But it is currently December 31 of your fourth year.  I recommend planning your graduate school studies a year ahead.

I write quite a few letters of recommendations for students I don't know very well.  (I'm in a math & stats department at a Canadian university.) Honestly, having talked to students outside of class about classwork and your own independent research interests puts you above the median ...


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A lecturer wants to grade me based on 'creativity' in a task, how do I succeed?
TLDR: In a course where students are required to do exercises, a programming project and write a report in small groups, the lecturer announced that grading will be based on 'creativity' and how funny or interesting he thinks the results are. How can I cope with this as a student?

I am taking a mandatory course where a programming project and exercises are carried out in small groups of students. Over the last years, the projects were relatively similar from what I've heard, and the course is known for a comparatively large workload with no deadline or fixed extent.
An anecdotal example told by the lecturer is that someone wrote a 170 page report and implemented his own wireless transfer protocol (which is only partly related to the course contents). Students from the last semesters took up to around a year in total to finish their projects.
This is my final semester where I take courses (hopefully), and the only semester I am able to take this course specifically. After that, there will be my masters thesis.
In the introduction to the course, the lecturer has mentioned that he does not want to keep the old format of long reports about the basics, but rather wants students to write 'creative' blog posts in addition to a report to be turned in. In particular, he is looking for us to write about things he likes or perceives as funny (but is still related to the topic, which according to him has a lot of potential for this).
In addition to the report and programming exercises, he lecturer wants students to write creative written blog posts about topics closely related to the exercises. These posts are supposed to contain funny and interesting information, as in "we accidentally made a mistake but the outcome looks/sounds funny" or "during the exercises we found out/made an assumption and verified it by xyz".
I want to mention that this is the same lecturer who fell asleep during two of my talks he had to grade, and I was previously dissatisfied with his grading on one of these. Now I have a new task where the desired outcome is unclear, and the task description is very subjective. During the introduction, I have explicitly asked for fixed deadlines and a statement about the extent of the project and report (as in, how many pages and such). He replied that he would 'probably' write down a few sentences about the task soon.
My worry is that there will be a lot of work for me, since i would like to get a very good grade. In addition, I fear that my work won't result in what the lecturer wants, and I am worried that I might get a worse grade than desired due to 'creative' grading.
My questions are:

Should I communicate this to the lecturer?
If yes, how?
How can I effectively deal with this unclear task in a way that will not leave me frustrated and overworked?

I understand that me being unsatisfied with a grade is not so much a problem and rather common in students, but my main concern is that I don't want to do unproportional amounts of work and then be given an average or worse grade.

Real problems have often several solutions which satisfy a requirement, some elegant, some short, some more convoluted. Finding a good solution there is a creative effort - and making that part of the grade seems valid (even when it sounds quite fuzzy)

@user111388 This was specified in April, in the first online session (my university does an e-learning semester, which started on April 20th).

This feels like a good time to file for credit/no credit grading in advance based on the past experience with said professor.

Is there intermittent feedback - i.e. can you write a blog post and ask if this is going in the right direction ?

I am not certain but I very much assume there will be intermittent feedback.

You should demand that your professor pose an interesting and, if possible, funny problem.

"things he likes or perceives as funny" If he said it like that, then I am in the "this is wrong" camp. "I am the king, make me laugh" as harryak put it should not be a criterion for grading. Many people probably assume that he phrased it differently. If you are unsure how it was meant, you could ask him to clarify what he means by "creative". "You probably don't mean creative writing, right? I mean we are comp sci after all". Tone is very important. Try to make the questions feel lighthearted/curious if you can. But creative solutions to a problem is appropriate, if that is the answer.

I'd push for the lecturer to give y'all the grading rubric in advance. I have lots of sympathy for open format assignments. But students should be given clear goals about what the assignment should accomplish content-wise other than "impress me!".

I wouldn't ask for a page minimum. IMHO page minimums have no place in Academia. It should be all about the content. In my undergrad we always had page limits. That taught us a great deal about communicating efficiently.

This really should be as simple as asking your lecturer for the rubric they will be using to grade the project. A rubric provides the lecturer a grading standard that is defensible, and also provides guidance to what is expected of the students.

tl;dr: your lecturer is right in principle. Commit time and effort to your project and try to be creative.
In higher education, students are expected to develop the skills which enable them to apply a number of techniques, compare the results, evaluate their effectiveness, synthesise new methods, or even suggest new approaches to a problem. Your lecturer is right to expect students to be creative.
In the last decades academia is under an increasing pressure of corporate managerial culture: education is considered as service and students are treated as customers. This creates a new kind of relations. Some students expect to acquire complex skills without spending sufficient time practising them (without feeling overworked) and expect first-class grades without committing themselves to the work required. Some students, supported and encouraged by academic managers, require more strict and deterministic rules to be set for academic assessments, such as precise specification of assessments, past papers to be provided with model solutions, and new assessments to be very predictable. Under this pressure, academics are forced to remove creative elements from their assessments and ultimately from their courses. As the result, many students don't develop the creative, teamwork and communication skills which are important for employers.
Even if your lecturer was not very efficient in communicating expectations, they are right in principle: they actually want you to use education as the opportunity to develop right skills. You want security and a good mark. Your think as a consumer; your lecturer thinks as an educator.
So my suggestion is: trust your lecturer; commit time to the project; try to be creative as much as possible. For this, learn at least 3 different methods to solve the problem, reproduce them, and try to create one more from scratch. Compare the results and present results in an engaging and visual way. Plan at least 5 hours of work for 1 minute  of final presentation or 1 page of final report.

I think the OP should rather take a course in creative writing or improvision theatre to be more funny if he wants the good grade than "learn at least 3 different methods to solve the problem"

@user111388 I understand where your sarcasm is coming from. But creative writing can actually help one advance their career; perhaps even more than using social media to criticise their lecturer. Sure, "funny" is not a good word to describe the desired outcome. I ask my students to write in accessible and engaging way.

As I said, the lecturer might've used an imperfect word to describe an example, but what they probably want is for posts to be engaging,  not overly technical, not academically dry, but instead aimed at wider audience. Writing for broad audience is an important skill nowadays. One can hardly get funding for a research project with no outreach / public engagement element in it.

I think that the intention of the lecturer is very close to what you (Dmitry) describe. There will be continous work about ongoing exercises, and we are not explicitely writing comedic or creative texts. My initial reaction was very similar to "I would take a creative writing course if i wanted to learn it", but I can certainly understand the approach described in this answer. I'll try to follow the advice in the last paragraph!

@DmitrySavostyanov, that last comment about trying to be engaging and appealing to a wider audience and not "academically dry" is a much better explanation than your existing answer, imho. I'd offer to include that as opposed to being "creative".

@DmitrySavostyanov OP DID say funny: In particular, he is looking for us to write about things he likes or perceives as funny (but is still related to the topic, which according to him has a lot of potential for this).

The trick though is, if you were surprised by this kind of assignment, and you do put in work but don't get the best grade, but later hone your skills, how much permanently does that poorer grade hold one back? As I think that the system in many cases seems to punish failure by making poorer grades, instead of learning steps, permanent negative indicators. When in reality, failure is a natural part - even necessary - of learning. So permanence should have no place unless the learner makes such of it.

And another problem I'd wonder about in this assignment is not simply that it's asking for "creative", but that it is asking for "what the instructor finds funny". The first seems like a not-too-bad requirement given what you've said here, but the second has a seemingly rather arbitrary "get in their head" kind of thing to it. What if your solution to a problem is clever but definitely not funny at all to him?

@The_Sympathizer. As with all things, we hope that the instructor has the imagination to understand even what he doesn't agree with. Also, back to your excellent point about failure. Reading people is a necessary skill, and we generally learn it by failing. A lot.

@Mad Physicist : in which case it'd seem to make the most sense then to just not care about the grades and care only about the learning.

@The_Sympathizer. Agreed. I believe that's always true. Generally having a solid understanding will trump grades in the long run

My first impression of what you describe is that the instructor tries to achieve two things:

he wants to avoid teaching you to write long reports, which could be
a good thing; there are many fields where writing long reports
should not be a priority.
he is gradually allowing more freedom as students progress through the curriculum.

The latter is what I do as well: for first year bachelor students I give very short strucutured exercises, and last year master students get an exercise to do some analysis of your choice on a topic you like with data you found using one or more of the methods we discussed in class as appropriate. I do of course reward creativity in the latter exercise. This is (at least for me) the goal of a university education: at the end they should be able to do tasks like these on their own. This does mean that each time you make a step in that direction, you will push students outside their comfort zone, but that is the point: you cannot grow if you stay in your comfort zone. This also means that if you give students more freedom, the exercise by necessity become less structured and the grading less predictable.
So one possible solution to your problem is a change of perspective: Don't focus on the grade, but instead view this as an opportunity to grow. You might fail, but failure is also very much a part of learning. Moreover, failure in a project does not necessarily mean failure of that class. One of the courses I learned most about as a student was one where I had a cool idea, but I could not get it to work. Eventually, I had to hand in what I got. I got points for the idea but also lost points for the fact that it was not done, which I though was fair enough. More importantly, I use the lessons I learned from getting stuck in that course till this day.

I think in your last paragraph you raise an important point (which can be easily overlooked from a student's perspective): a lecturer usually knows how this goes and can see and value and grade the effort and work (and will try his best to do so in a fair manner), even when the final product is not one which works. Such failure is not necessarly a "not pass" grade. And a perfect solution with no comments on how it was reached might not give perfect grade either (depending on requirements)

I do think your eduation method (students have to choose the method) is reasonable. However, I perceive the question differently: Students should write creative blog posts about things the lecturer finds funny or interesting (as in: he awards creative writing). Did we understand the question differently or did I misunderstand your answer?

It is about what the students thought was funny or interesting. I (the lecturer) do not have to find that funny, but it does allow me to see if the student is engaged with her or his topic and is able to think outside the box. So I don't think that this is an exercise in creative writing. Normally I would try to gage this through face to face interaction with the student, but that is now impossible. I can see this as an attempt to replace that. Whether it works is empirical question, but in this situation experimentation is unavoidable.

So could you maybe clarify: As I see it, the question is about a lecturer who grades based on "things he likes or perceives as funny" while your answer is about unstructured exercises. Could you say why your answer answers the question? As I see it, your teaching method is certainly reasonable and common; for the method of the instructor in question, the method may or may not be reasonable, but it is certainly not common. Could you clarify for me why your answer answers the question? Or am I missing your point? Please don't take this as a critique, I'd just like to understand your answer.

I mostly agree with @DmitrySavostyanov : As I said before (and this will be the last time I will say it): the exercise is probably meant as documenting what the student found funy, interesting, or difficult, not about what the instructor might find funy. This can give the instructor insight about how the student is engaged with the subject. As an instructor you don't want to be entertained by students, if only because most are just not that funny. You do want to know how students are dealing with the material.

I am surprised, or, better said, appalled, by the answers given so far. It looks like the general consensus is that the instructor is right and you should just shut up and comply. I strongly disagree. If this is a technical course, the instructor should only grade technical accomplishment. Extra credit for "creativity" or "humor" are OK, but those are subjective and therefore should not be used when evaluating a technical skill.
Sadly, I think you are in a difficult situation: if the instructor thinks it's OK to put those requirements on a technical project, my guess is he is not the type of person you can hope to convince by rational arguments. I would go to someone above him and file a complaint.

If that appalls you, you might want to read OP's question about the sleeping lecturerand the answers saying this is okay or even OP's fault;)

How do you distinguish a technical course and a non-technical course?

Academia.SE might have a biased faculty/student ratio, but I think all the answers I have read raise valid points. You understood my worries correctly: It is hard for me to meet requirements that are not fixed and partly subjective.

A school that tolerates subjective grading criteria is just asking for discrimination complaints. At some point the subjective grades will correlate with membership in a protected class (race, sex, religion, etc.) due to random chance alone, creating the pretext (if not justification) for a formal proceeding.

@EvilSnack - that is like saying that a company that tolerates subjective employee ranking criteria is just asking for complaints. Yet, that then implies that there is a unique, objective method for evaluating employee contributions. And, of course, there isn't (and Deming is quite specific about that).

@JonCuster Yes, it is. That is why companies should try to be as objective as possible about employee evaluation.

@nick012000 - and that path leads to madness such as mistaking lines of code (its objective!) for actual contribution. Have you actually had to evaluate performance of professionals in the workplace?

I'm looking for where I said that it's okay to use objective criteria for evaluations that shouldn't be done at all. No, not finding it.

@JonCuster The phrase "Key Performance Indicator" exists for a reason, whether it's lines of code, number of widgets produced, or the average marks of students taught on standardized tests.

@nick012000 - and relying on those alone to measure human performance leads to all kinds of problems. If you want to know more I would suggest reading Deming's books on quality where he explicitly details the perverse nature of trying to 'measure' human performance (such as producing more, but crappier, widgets to optimize 'performance').

@JonCuster We're talking about a classroom setting here, students are not employees subject to arbitrary reviews (which I agree happens frequently, but this is about academia). Evaluating a technical project based on ambiguities like "creativity" and "humor" is just about the same as assigning the final grade based on the flip of a coin.

@Sam - no, non-objective does not mean arbitrary.

@JonCuster It's arbitrary from the student's perspective because without knowing how to get the "correct" solution, he/she can only guess and hope for the best. Can you give me an example of a non-objective evaluation criteria that doesn't depend somehow on some arbitrary factor such as the instructor's own sense of humor? And remember we're discussing a technical course.

@Sam I still don't understand what you mean by technical course. Is programming technical? Can you always grade code by running it through a set of unit tests? Or perhaps at some level things like clarity of the code, beauty of its structure, helpfulness of comments become equally important? Can you measure these things fully objectively? Do they matter?

@Sam - and somehow I manage to do performance reviews for a dozen or so PhD scientists every year. Unique, objective measurements of their performance are decidedly not possible. Sure, it would be easy to just count publications. (True story - one year a manager in a discussion objected to a proposed high rating of a staff member since they had no journal publications that year. The staff's manager immediately rejoined that, yes, there were no publications but the staff had personally briefed the President of the US on a technical issue. The high ranking held.)

@DmitrySavostyanov Trying to define "technical" could easily derail this discussion. Since the OP seems to be talking about a programming class, you can replace "technical course" in all my comments by "programming course".

@DmitrySavostyanov Philosophers still disagree on what's objective/subjective after centuries of discussions, so let's just say that all grading criteria should not depend on unknown factors like the instructor's sense of humor, or his sense of beauty. What does "beautiful code" mean? Code  decorated with ASCII art? OK, but even that should be explicitly stated.

@Sam OK, so you personally don't understand what the beautiful code is? That's fine. Now, do you think you can become a really outstanding programmer without understanding it?

@DmitrySavostyanov I do have an idea of what "beautiful code" is, but is it the same as yours? how would I know if you don't tell me what it is? What would you do if I was your instructor and told you your grade was going to be based on the beauty of your code? Wouldn't you ask what my idea of beauty was?

@Sam All these questions are asked all the time by students in non-technical disciplines, like Drama, Art, Design, Architecture, etc. There is no precise definition of beauty. Still, student who were focused on this aspect of work and were properly supported by their teachers tend to perform better in their future career. Why? Cause they received non-objective feedback from their teachers, and used it to improve their work.  BTW, Don Knuth called his book "The Art of Computer Programming" for a reason - programming is not a purely technical discipline, all the above applies to it too.

@DmitrySavostyanov My point is not that concepts such as beauty, clarity or humor have no place in a programming context, it's just using them for assigning grades is riddled with problems. Maybe it's OK to give extra credit for that, but I would be worried if part of my grade is based on how "elegant" the instructor thinks my code is, unless he/she gives a precise definition of "elegant", and therein lies the problem. I ask again, what would you do in such a situation?

@JonCuster In the example you mention there's an objective criteria being applied, and that is "proven ability". Publishing is one way to determine that, but surely briefing the President on a technical issue is also valid. Give me an example of something similar to what the OP mentioned, where a staff member was rated based on something like the humor in their publications or their dancing skills.

Although I generally agree with the gist of other answers in respect to "learn to be independent, especially from grades" I strongly disagree about the instructor being right here.
As I can read from your other questions and your name, I assume you are German. Since I am from Germany, too, I am a hundred percent sure that everything this lecturer uses as basis for his grades is inherently wrong and frowned upon in academic context. There has to be - and this is not just my opinion - an objective measure to grade the students by. This is usually written in exam regulations for the academic institution.
Since your professor seems to be a rather problematic character you should however not confront him with this, if you want to get a good grade afterwards. Ask him nicely, if he doesn't comply, politely insist. If he still sticks to his "I am the king, make me laugh"-thing, go tell on him.

Would you mind saying who one could tell? (The way I experienced the german system, there is no authority (which has real power, not only on paper) to complain over tenured prof's teaching which can do something (except for cases where the prof did something criminal like touching the students inappropriately).

Well, you're right that this is not easy. I would suggest going to the student council (Fachschaftsrat) if this happens in a university, in my experience they are really not as powerless as one might initially think. In fact, one lecturer at my university was banned from giving lectures to first semester students after an incident with unfair exams to "sort them out early".

I'm wondering how "creativity" is to be graded. How is one to know whether a grade for this is too high or too low?

That's because "creativity" is no objective measure. Objective measures are quantified and the same result must be attainable from independent people.

Nit Germany i know, but when i did my undergrad degree in science at Camrbidge, the criteria for a 1st class mark (the top mark available) in the official university rules was "shows evidence of original though, novel insight or writing with flare and verve"

Should I communicate this to the lecturer?

If you are not sure what the lecturer wants you to do, then yes you should communicate that.

I have explicitly asked for fixed deadlines

You should be able to set deadlines for yourself, within the limits provided by the lecturer.

and a statement about the extent of the project and report (as in, how many pages and such). He replied that he would 'probably' write down a few sentences about the task soon.

That is a reasonable thing for him to do.

If yes, how?

If you do not get the information you need, try writing an outline of your report/blog, and ask the lecturer for feedback on it.  Do this very early.  You might do it twice.  But do not do it every week or more.

How can I effectively deal with this unclear task in a way that will not leave me frustrated and overworked?

If the lecturer does not give you guidance when you ask for it, you will be frustrated.  There is no avoiding that.
How much work you do is your choice.  Unfortunately we don't know the relationship between work and grades.

The deadlines I am referring to are meant for turning everything in. My motivation for this is not me getting work done (usually not an issue) but for him to set a limit on the extent of the work. Thank you for the advice on asking for feedback on an outline, I'll make sure to do so!

I think you actually want a deadline for him to grade the work, not a deadline for you to turn it in.

This is something I would like to have in addition, but I don't think it is going to happen ;) Waiting for a grade is not so much of an issue though as it occurs frequently (for me).

The merits of these type of "creative" assignments seems to be up in the air amongst the answers here. However, regardless of how valuable this assignment is towards your education I believe I can give pragmatic advice towards your 3rd question.
While I think free-thinking and creativity are great things, I fully understand the stress associated with open-ended assignments. The requirements are fluid and unclear, yet the potential consequences of failing are glaring. This is how I've always dealt with it.

How can I effectively deal with this unclear task in a way that will not leave me frustrated and overworked?

Do your work early. As early as you possibly can. As Anonymous Physicist said, you should communicate the direction of your project with the instructor early. Ask for their opinions of your outline in writing, so that you can refer back to it later if they changed their mind when grading.
When you're close to being finished ask them to quickly glance over it. Nothing too formal, so as not to waste their time, but make sure the essence of your work is sufficient. Now polish it up and turn it in.

I don't think you really need to think in the shoes of the lecturer since finding something creative will solely depend on your delivery of work. Try something that appeals to you rather than trying to guess what their likes are because it will only give you stress on realizing maybe this isn't what the lecturer likes.
Plus, you're gonna have a bad time figuring out what should be the best design.
Just choose what is best for you since you're gonna enjoy the times you spend with it
try thinking your lecturer as a close person to you. Maybe this tip will give you a boost

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Asking for reversing my decision after declining a PhD offer
I received a great PhD offer from University A (in the US) and after a very hard time making decision, I ended up not accepting it for family reasons and instead I accepted an offer from University B (not in the US) (because if I go to A, I most probably wouldn't be able to visit my family at all for 5 years, whereas I'll have the option to do that with my current choice, B). I explained this reason to the department chair after declining the offer and expressed my regrets for this issue stopping me from doing my PhD at A in a field I always dreamt about.
Now, over a month after April 15, a few things has happened that I regret what I did, and I really want to change my decision and tolerate those years of distance from my family but go to A:

Perhaps most importantly, the 2-body problem: My partner just
got an amazing offer near A, and while she may also get an almost
equally-amazing offer from somewhere near B, the one near A would be still more tempting for her.
My realization evolved. A is a world top-10 in the field, but
that field is a field I have very little background in! I always
dreamt about working in that field, but never thought I could actually do
that and spent my entire academic life in a different field.
So, I think I was still confused about the opportunity I was given,
didn't quite appreciate it, and frankly, was very scared. This is
while B, a top-tier in the world in my undergrad field, is an
institution I always knew and it wasn't hard to fully appreciate the
offer from there. In the past month, my understanding about myself
and my situation has evolved, and I regret my decision.

My questions:

Would it be acceptable if I contact the department at A again and explain these two reasons and ask if they could still take me in?! It's been so long since 4/15, but I think there's a chance they didn't actually fill in all the available spots for the position as I declined on 4/15. Would I destroy my reputation among the academics at A if I do ask if I could reverse my decision now? I'm afraid I may sound immature and unable of making a decision (which is obviously not too wrong, I did have issues, and was indeed too slow in getting to know myself from the time I received the unexpected offer until 4/15).
If you think I can ask for reconsideration, who should I contact and is it better to emphasize on point 1 or 2?

As always: you can always ask, but there is a good chance that they have moved on down the waiting list, and your spot is gone in the meantime.

I suggest you contact the department, minimizing overly personal details - but basically outlining that the life situation that caused you to decline their offer changed unexpectedly, and you would like to know if it would be possible to attend after all.
It is basically down to: 1) no, spot is no longer available or they can't extend/re-extend the offer, but you can probably reapply next year, no guarantees; 2) sure, that is possible, 3) it depends, they will ask additional questions or want to talk to you more before rendering a decision.
If you are professional in the communication then it will not cause everyone to look down on you, all reasonable people know life situations can change unexpectedly. It really isn't that big of a deal, they can either help or they can't/won't.
As for who to contact, I would tend to suggest whoever contacted you with the offer and/or the person who you contacted to decline. As for what to emphasize, I'd just keep it simple and relate it most directly to why you declined in the first place, but try not to over-explain. Perhaps you just realized that there are ways to mitigate being away from family that you had not considered, or that you will have other family you can visit, or just that you'll end up having to be away from some parts of your family regardless so you'd rather persue something you are passionate about rather than stick with the familiar - etc. A sentence or two is probably all you need to include in the first contact - the situation has changed and you just want to see if attending would still be an option.
The only other thing you should be clear about is that you are in a position to accept such an offer from A - i.e., you have not already accepted a mutually-exclusive offer from another US graduate school, as that will tend to create additional bureaucratic resistance (such as needing a statement from the other school, etc.).
It might be an option, or it just might not, but so long as you act reasonably (maybe have an especially rational friend read your email before you send it to make sure you keep it short and professional) there is no long time harm in asking. Life happens - good luck, regardless!

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Is it looked down upon to do a second PhD (vs a postdoc)?
In January, I started my third year of a computer science PhD.  My goal has always been to balance "X" and computer science ("X" being a non-engineering subject), and I thought I could do that at my current institution while officially getting my computer science degree.  Unfortunately, I underestimated the extent to which I'd be required to work on my advisor's agenda (he is strictly a machine learning person), so, while I've gotten a few minor papers in computer science + "X" workshops, I haven't been able to pursue the research agenda that I particularly care about.  In addition, I realized I really need a more deep study of "X" than I realized, and potentially than of CS.
The way I see it, I have three viable options:

Leave this summer with a terminal masters in CS, find a temporary job as a software engineer or whatever I can manage for a year, and apply to "X" degrees this fall, to start in Sept. 2021.  This doesn't sound too bad, but I'd risk not getting into "X" and ending up with no PhD and hence no chance at a faculty position (which I want).
Continue publishing workshop papers on the side, and try to get a postdoc in "X" in a few years. My worry is that if I skip doing a PhD concentrated on my desired research topic (which is fairly specific and isn't something people are currently working on), I'll never get a chance to explore it fully, and that I'd only be able to get mediocre postdoc positions if I'm applying to a field I don't know enough about.
Get a PhD in CS as fast as I can, and then head straight to the start of another PhD in "X".  I like the idea of having a PhD in my back pocket, and this way I would have a lot of time to develop my research agenda, but I'm nervous that admissions committees would look down on someone who was "collecting degrees."

Any advice?
Also, for clarification: My desired research agenda in "X" has nothing to do with machine learning, so, while I can try to merge interests while a CS student, I believe it would be fairly superficial and only for the purpose of leaning my resume in that direction.
Edit: "X" is a humanities field that generally shares very little with CS except among a very few "computational X-ers"

How close is X to CS, close like math or un-close like British Literature?

Related https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17232/is-doing-two-phds-a-good-path

I understand you have passion in X. But, you haven't said how much you like CS. If you like CS, #3 is fine. Otherwise, do you think you can endure the pain doing it? I have been on this site for a long time. I have seen many posts complaining about the pain while doing PhD, particularly when doing something they don't like.. Please think about this.

I guess I would approach this from the opposite end. You want a faculty position, what is the best path to that goal? And would your feelings change if you had to fit your future research plans into a more acceptable box?
You say "no one" is working in the field you want to work in, and it's not a sufficiently interesting topic to catch your current advisor's interest in letting you play around in that space. Have you reached out to anyone in X field at your university? Do they seem interested or supportive? Are they willing to commit cold hard cash to your training or research?
To me, the idea that you're interested in a 100% new out-of-the-box field suggests that actually finding a faculty position in that field would be close to impossible, because from a hiring committee's point of view, your chance of landing big papers, big grants, finding students who share your interests, etc., would be next to zero. You'd be fighting uphill the whole way.
The reality is that academia is hyper-specialized at the moment, and academic careers have probably always been very prestige-/stature-driven. Someone doing computational medievalism (or whatever) risks seeming like a dilettante by the medievalists, and imho most science-minded folks sadly don't hold their humanities colleagues' research in very high regard. [aside: i very clearly remember attending a career panel back in grad school where a physicist casually suggested that humanities papers don't undergo peer review. The indignant English prof in attendance lost no time setting the record straight!]
Therefore, you might consider whether your research direction, however novel/interesting it is to you, has a place in your academic ambitions? Or maybe once you land your CS professor job, you could always try and learn something during a sabbatical? In any case, before you put years of your life, not to mention your own money (my understanding is that most humanities PhDs are self-funded or require substantial time spent doing teaching work for a small stipend), you should get more perspective from others whose opinions you truest in the two fields you want to bridge.

One might guess that the reason there are so few Computational Medievialists is because of exactly the same problem the OP is facing... You basically need to completely separate educations to be qualified to do it.

I see no reason for a second doctorate, and admissions committees might not either, if the "new" field's fundamental research methodologies are similar to those of the old. You might just be taking up space in a program that might better go to another. You probably won't really learn a lot.
There would be some value in it if the fields were wildly divergent. You have the skills. Use them during the post-doc to position yourself through scholarly work with the techniques you already know. The other is a wast of time - yours and other's.

sorry I just added that the field's predominant research methodologies are completely disparate.  Does that change anything?

If you need additional training in those methodologies, then perhaps yes. For similar fields this is unlikely to be the case, but for others it is possible. But whether the additional credential buys you anything in the marketplace is another matter.


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What are the advantages and downsides of a broad PhD thesis?
A previous version of this question focused too much on my personal situation. The current one aims at being more generic.
The main question boils down to what are the advantages and disadvantages of having a broader PhD thesis?
In the context of a PhD student possibly working in a interdisciplinary field, what are the consequences of working on two (or more) projects, both related to the overall field but each project not directly related to each other? This is assuming there are no major concerns about graduating, the thesis committee accepting or being able to produce quality research.
More in particular, what are the (academic) career consequences of that? I would imagine it can make it easier to find a postdoc position, since the range topics you've worked with is larger, but how is it perceived?
I assume one of the major downsides is possibly the lack of focus. If it is still possible to achieve good research results in both areas (but clearly having fewer papers published in each subfield), are there other problems? Is it usually frowned upon?

This is a question for your advisor. Normally narrow, rather than broad, is the preferred option. But it ain't necessarily so. Early exploration is good, but the dissertation is very focused.

@Buffy thank you for your answer! I did talk with my advisors, but I got conflicting replies from the two of them. Or do you mean with advisor somebody else besides my supervisors?

No, the supervisors. Conflicting answers is a bad thing. BAD thing. Everyone needs to be on the same page. But if the one only meant keep your options open for a while, then it is probably fine. Your goal is to graduate, not to solve every open research problem in the multiverse.

@Buffy is graduating hard, if you've done good research for three years or so? Right now I am more concerned about my career options after my PhD, but I don't know if this is the right way to approach it

Your supervisors should be able to tell you about your progress. Most places, the dissertation is the proof.

My supervisor says that my current track record is quite good and they don't expect problems with me graduating (but this is the same supervisor that says there are no problems exploring two topics)

There are dissertations of either kind: Those which are clearly focused on one topic, and those which cover a wide range of different topic under some rather loose "umbrella title".
Clearly, the traditional approach is the former. But the latter is rather common these days.
Whether the latter is acceptable depends on your committee, and thus to a large extent on the advisor who writes the report and sits on the committee.  If that person/those persons agree, there should be no problem. Overall, as far as I can tell the latter should be no problem these days, as long as the overall scientific output is on par.
On the other hand, you should take into account that looking in too many directions at the same time might be detrimental to your PhD in a different way, if its consequence is that you explore many directions but complete none.  In that sense, staying more focused is a "safer" option.  On the other hand, a PhD is a good time to exlore different directions, if you make sure that you don't use this as an excuse not to get projects finished.

The OP can search this site for "stapled thesis" which gives some additional information. But that is only used in fields/institutions that permit (or even prefer) it.

@Buffy It is completely possible to do a non-stapled thesis (if I interpret the word correctly) with a wide range of topics, as well as a staped thesis with a coherent set of papers.  I think this is a rather orthogonal direction.

@user151413 thank you for your reply! Do you also have an insight on the consequences of choosing either option beyond my phd, with regard to career opportunities both inside and outside of academia?

@Buffy: I've seen several non-stapled theses that had two or more sections, each on different problems. One such is by someone who was a posdoc during my last two years of graduate school, working in the "Polish style" real analysis and topology group that my supervisor was in, and many others can be found by searching here with Thesis Keyword = topics (not all hits you get will be examples, however).


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What social skills should I practice to make a successful doctoral application?
I've been applying to doctoral positions in mathematics with a strong background. BSc and MSc in math, and a MSc in computational math/engineering. I've got research experience in my field and connected fields, a paper in preprint and more to come (with novel results), solid references, teaching experience, participated in international competitions representing my university/country, good grades. Still, most of the time I don't even get an interview. I definitely understand that there are people who are better than me, and I'm not mad about it. However, often when they publish who got the positions, and it can be someone who did their BSc over 6-7 years, or who had an adjacent degree (such as computer science or physics) but studied more mathematics, or who hasn't done any teaching or research otherwise.
A few professors I know have told me several times that it's not really fair, so what I have left are social skills. I just don't know what to say. I've had my CV, statement of purpose, application letters reviewed and they said it was really good.
How can I write an application that broadly speaking appeals to such a recruitment committee? What are some interesting forms of describing my ambitions? What catches the attention of a recruiter in terms of research ambitions? I have clearly stated my research topics, as well as why I want to do research in it and how, but I don't know how to spice it up.
Just to be clear, I'm in Europe, so I didn't drop out of any PhD program to get my master degrees. Also, most of the positions were open positions, so I just sent my application and then they will decide on what advisors should get new students.
EDIT 1: I'd like to clear out that I have a BSc and MSc in mathematics, and an additional MSc which is much more applied and incorporates a lot of physics and computer science. Thus, I do have the required courses to apply for a pure math position, which I even have checked up on on their websites.

If you aren't getting interviews, I doubt that it has to do with social skills.

I was thinking about pre-application talks with the potential advisors, and show large interest in their work. This is apparently more common in the United States, which I thought could weigh in on it. Otherwise, I don't know what could be the issue, since they hire people who - on paper - have far less impressive merits.

In most fields, including math, in the US, advisors don't have much say in who gets admitted. It is done by committee who make selections based on the written application.

Do you know what went wrong during your interviews or was competition simply better? Are you specifically applying to positions that require your background? Not impossible, but it could raise some eyebrows when switching from applied to pure (not necessarily implying a flat rejection though)

@Marius My background is in pure math, and I did all my thesis in the same area as what I applied for. Most of the time I didn't get an answer, but I also got professors sending me offers to join them, but then I didn't get an answer back. In short, there has been an interest from the professors, but none of the comittees have wanted to consider me.

When you say “have been applying” how many applications have you done? With a process that has some random elements like this, there is an argument that you just may need to do more to see the result you want.

"most of the time I don't even get an interview" seems to be the default experience when using the "shotgun approach" of applying to many positions with very different topics. I made good experiences with writing few, carefully crafted applications, where my background was a 100% perfect match.

@lighthousekeeper It's a bit hard to do that when applying to open positions that are very common in my country and surrounding countries. This is due to the positions being paid and funded by the universities/the state, and thus they want a committee to make the decisions. I've been very specific about what I want to do, so I'm not just aiming at anything, but I want to do it within my subfield.

"I've been very specific about what I want to do" - I think this limits drastically your options. Supervisors and departments also have a view of what they want to do. You limit the potential overlap between your interest and theirs. I always discuss/negotiate possible topics with my potential applicants to find out commonalities. If an applicant comes with a ready-made detailed picture what they want to do, if that does not match what I would like to invest my time in, I probably would down prioritise the application. If it is an exceptional candidate...

...then I would consider negotiating with them about the detailed topic to see whether there is common ground. However, a supervisor that does not see his research interests represented for the duration of the 3-4 years of a PhD, has no incentive to see a PhD studentship and supervision invested in a topic they have no stake in. It has nothing to do, in any case, with social skills, especially as they do not easily stand out of an application.

I'm sorry, but this is an never-ending discussion. I've been general about my ambitions in what field I want to work in, then listed possible subfields I'm interested in, and then mentioned some specific topics I could consider. You keep telling me that I'm too general, and at the same time too specific.

Since you're applying in Europe (where PhD positions are generally bound to a specific PI), your topics would need to be tailored to the potential supervisor. Is that the case?

Yes, however many of the positions are rather flexible. Usually each project has a number of directions depending on what you want to do, and this gets decided after you've been accepted.

In addition to Titus' answer which I believe is complete to the question posed.
You mention that students who get the positions are coming either from a straight Maths background or have other adjacent degrees, still with more Mathematics studied. Is it possible that you are missing some of the so called core Mathematics courses? It is mentioned in the question that you graduated an MSc in Computational Mathematics/Engineering. This leads me to believe that you could be missing some advanced knowledge from higher courses in fields such as Algebra or Analysis. Some professors/groups may prefer students who have acquired this type of knowledge over students with more experience in research, as there could be less training involved and candidates could "straightforward" jump into work.
Moreover, although it may not be a correct assumption, I believe you have oscillated a bit between fields over the last few years. From an application perspective, this could possibly imply some sort of inconsistency that could negatively impact your applications. Obviously you could turn this around in an application to look positive, but in the end it comes down to the committee to decide if they rely on a student who constantly changes his mind/preferences.
Best advice I could add, given all the good thoughts you've already given, is to contact some of the professors you are/were interested and ask what they are expecting from an applicant and ask for feedback for the interviews you got rejected. This may clarify in which position you are and what actions you could take.

Sorry, but I may have formulated it poorly. I have a BSc and MSc in mathematics (mostly pure mathematics courses), and then an additional MSc which is more of a physics/CompSci hybrid. My math department has a large selection of courses (the largest department in my country), and I've taken most of them, even PhD-level pure math courses. The others I mentioned could have a BSc in computer science and then a Math/CompSci MSc, or physics BSc and applied math MSc, which is why I made the presumption that I've "had more math" than them.


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Can research breadth be a downside when applying for doctoral positions?
I'm going to apply for a doctorate position in mathematics soon, and I'm wondering if my breadth can be of any disadvantage. I have two MSc degrees, in mathematics and engineering respectively. The past years I've coauthored papers in different field on the side, all of which had novel content. My work has ranged from pure math, nanotechnology, to high performance computing and numerical analysis.
I'm wondering if this can be held against me when applying for a more "pure" math doctorate. As a side note, in my country a doctorate is the latter part of an American PhD, after you're done with the coursework and you mainly do research. So, the main focus will, of course, be on my research aptitude. I have demonstrated this through my work, and also by participating in competitions/conferences.
By the time they decide I will also have had some applied/industrial math experience, working for a research institute, and I have teaching experience with undergraduate courses.
Would I seem a much less interesting applicant than someone who has only focused on pure math, but doesn't have the same research experience (which is often the case)?

You could say something like:
"I've done a pretty wide range of different things, trying to find out where my true passion lies. Getting multiple masters degrees shows that I'm not a dilettante, I get stuff done. And it's been an enriching experience, letting me see the connections between different fields. But after long consideration I've decided pure math is what I want to settle down on."
And it has the virtue of being true (from what I read in your question).

Consider what a professor might think, while reviewing two candidates, one pure math straight up, and you who's tried several different things and finished them.

The pure math student might have a lead on you in pure math.
You've demonstrated persistence and an ability to get things done. Likely, you will also get a PhD done.
You've shown that you're mentally flexible enough to master multiple different subject fields.
The math student might at some point decide he's not seen enough of the rest of the world and worry if staying cocooned in pure math is really what he wants. You on the other hand have tasted the various forbidden fruits and decided this is really the one you want.

Just on the surface like that, you look like a candidate worth interviewing.

Sounds like a reasonable way to handle it. I think I've been worrying too much about what content I've been studying rather than what I've achieved. Thank you for the advice.

As long as you have the required background and the commitment to study deeply in a field you should do fine. I doubt that anyone would hold other experiences against you. But you will need to be clear in your SoP for study in mathematics that you are serious about mathematics and have the desire to go deep into some relatively small area to do the required research for a dissertation. If you say you want to study all of these things equally in the future you might not be taken seriously.
But the only way to know for sure is to make application and show that you are a good candidate for success. In Europe (I assume UK or EU) you might need to convince an advisor of your seriousness to achieve admission. You seem to understand that doctoral study is narrow and deep, so I'd guess you can make it work.

The European system of directly applying to an advisor might actually be an advantage here. A short look at the publication list should immediately reveal if potential advisors similarly favor breadth in their own work and are thus more likely to see it as a positive trait in an applicant.


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How should personal/health be presented when explaining a bad grade at an interview?
For a PhD interview (European paid PhD which requires a MSc), what is the best way to present personal and health issues when motivating a bad grade? To put it in perspective, I have overall good grades from more than 30 courses, but I have two relevant courses taken 2-3 years ago (at the same time) where I just got a pass. These courses were only graded on the basis of one exam each, so the grade only reflects my score on the exam. The poor grade was due to a combination of mental health issues and a very stressful family situation, which made me completely lose focus while writing the exams.
How can I present this is a polite way, explaining that it doesn't reflect my actual capabilities? It was also more than 2 years ago, thus I've amassed more knowledge within these topics. It is quite common for course grades to be based on total effort, but for these I only had a few hours each to prove myself, and in a bad condition. I have also shown that I understand the topics through other courses and the theses I've written.
Are interviewers usually understanding in this regard? Especially, since it was a few hours of exam time, taken place 2 years ago while feeling very unwell, it is a very minor issue. Other than this I have a very good record, but I fear that this will come up as a question since it seems very out of place.

Don't dwell on it, and don't bring it up unless your interviewer specifically asks about it. A couple "pass" grades doesn't sound too terrible to me, lots of people have much more serious marks on their academic record, such as a semester in which they failed most/all of their classes. Even in that case, though, I wouldn't bring it up in an interview.
Your academic record will be viewed as a whole, rather than in microscopic detail. A concerning pattern would be poor grades in courses central to the work you want to do, like underperforming in math compared to other subjects if you are in a STEM field. Two "pass" grades in one semester is not such a pattern.
If an interviewer asks about it (I actually doubt they will, or if they do, it might actually be more tongue-in-cheek than serious: more of a comment on the rest of your strong record), I wouldn't dwell on it, either. You don't really owe them any details. "Yeah, I had a stressful family situation that semester and didn't feel as focused on my coursework" is more than enough (could also mention that it was specific to the time of the exams that solely determined the grades).
The rest of your record speaks for itself, so let it do that. Keep your focus on what's actually important in the interview, which is your interest in research. I think an interviewer would find it strange, maybe uncomfortable, and counterproductive if you spent the interview trying to explain two grades rather than talking about research. Once you start a research career, your past grades become mostly meaningless.
(as a disclaimer, I'm from the US and don't have any experience interviewing in Europe, though I'm fairly confident my answer translates or I wouldn't have written it)

I recently talked to one of the potential advisors, and he said the committee were wondering about and they will most likely ask about it. So, I just want to be prepared. The courses aren't really central in what I want to work in, but they are closely related. However, I have many other courses in the same area where I have good grades. These two are just outliers, and I've shown that I understand the topics in my theses. Thank you for the comments, though.

In addition to "stressful family situation" one might add that each of those grades was the result of a single examination.

@BobBrown Yeah, that does seem relevant and useful. Added.


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Can an advisor write a student's PhD thesis?
I've recently discovered a strange situation.  A few years ago, a senior mathematician published a certain solo paper X.  A few years prior to that, one of his students wrote a thesis Y on the same topic, and large parts of paper X are copied verbatim from thesis Y.  In the thesis, it is indicated that the work is intended to be a joint publication between the author and the student, however neither the student's name nor the thesis are mentioned in paper X.
Note: I am not concerned about the general issue of duplicating material from a thesis in journal papers (this seems to be considered acceptable, e.g., How much overlap is permitted between a submitted journal article and a thesis? and How to avoid self-plagiarism when adapting dissertation into a paper?), but here the authors of X and Y are different.
This suggests some possibilities, none all that great:

the advisor plagiarized the student's thesis
the advisor didn't plagiarize the student, because the advisor actually wrote the thesis, and later decided the student didn't deserve co-authorship
the advisor and the student wrote the thesis together, but the advisor just claimed sole authorship (I believe the student left academia)

I know the advisor was working on this project before, so I suspect one of the latter two is closest to reality.  I certainly thing something about this situation is wrong, but I don't know the details of what, so my question is:

To what extent is it acceptable for a student's advisor to physically write their PhD thesis?

I know sandwich theses are okay (depending on school), and in many areas theses comprise joint papers.  So I suppose it happens that in certain fields, that a student might not write any of their "thesis", except the introduction.  (In this case the introduction was copied also, but that's beside the point of this question.)
Note: In math, it is rare that the whole of a student's thesis work is published jointly with their advisor, even if the advisor did a lot of the work.  However, in math my personal expectation is that thesis should largely be written by the student; even if an advisor does most of the work for the thesis, it should be largely written by the student.  I'm interested in an answer for both math and non-math PhD theses, if there's a difference.

If your belief about the student is correct, a fourth scenario is possible: The student does not care about the publication any more, but the supervisor thinks it is important enough to get published. At some point the student may even want to retract their name, just so s/he is not bothered further.

@user3697176 Even if the student didn't want their name as a co-author, surely they would merit an acknowledgement?

Are the copied parts central to the results of the paper, or are they mostly just background material?

Your third bullet point doesn't necessarily indicate something fishy.

@NateEldredge It's not just background.  Most of the paper (which is not short) is copied essentially verbatim from the thesis.

No matter what the scenario, not citing the thesis seems to me plagiarism, (possibly self-plagiarism) even though answers to other questions seem to disagree.

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


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When citing your own work on a grant application, is it acceptable to change the order of authors so that your name appears first?
I review a grant application. One of the applicants, Author B, has published an article in a high impact journal as joint first author with Author A (Author A is not in the grant application). In the journal, the published order of authors is
Author A°, Author B°, ... (here, the "°" illustrate the joint first authorship)
However in the grant application, Author B refers to the same publication as:
Author B°, Author A°, ...
Author B put themself in the first position while citing their own published article (both in the body of the text and the reference section - the inversion is therefore not a typo).
Is it common practice to reverse the order of authors in a citation in such context? I asked this question to a few colleagues and they say that it is not unfamiliar to read this. Some are surprised though, but some understand - a very light academic misconduct that is acceptable.
The situation is embarrassing as I am quite surprised of the order inversion. I wonder if I need to report it to the grant committee (a national research body). If I report it and the misconduct is finally not seen as I see it, I would have impaired the application on a false reason.

I can't answer whether it's "common practice" but it's hard to see how this would be misconduct.
Both versions are telling us the same facts, that A and B are joint first author. The effect of the change is not to mislead about authorship, but to emphasise and clarify the part of that information that's most relevant for the review - not very different to bolding or highlighting something in order to draw the reader's attention.
If I were in B's position, I might be concerned that "Author A°, Author B°" could be misunderstood by a reviewer who is unfamiliar with the ° convention, or indeed one reading late at night without their glasses on.
It's hard to see what harm is done here. It might be slightly irregular but if that irregularity makes the relevant information clearer, and does not give a misleading impression on anything of substance, that irregularity seems excusable.

Thank you for highlighting the bright side. On the dark one, it is an alteration of an academic record. A thing you don't do, just like you don't compute your own personal H-index because you feel like Scopus missed some conference's citations. But your answer shows that the 2 views are valid. We could give the benefit of the doubt then. Another thought: the view you proposed might be different according to the country/region it is asked, a kind of academic culture difference (I don't come from the country I review for).

@DkSAP Yeah, variations across culture (national or otherwise) are full of traps! A few years back I submitted a maths-heavy paper which used the ∴ symbol, which I'd believed was pretty much universal, and was quite surprised to learn that it was unfamiliar to my reviewers in Europe. With such things, IMHO it's often good to follow the robustness principle: be strict with ourselves, and lenient on others.

I have seen  a version of this done pretty often in economics. So often, in fact, that it feels like the standard or convention. People write a modified citation and some version of (with coauthor A and B).

I don’t think it rises to the level of a reportable offense, but I certainly don’t think it’s appropriate to change the canonical citation.


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A Guide to enrol for a PhD in Management with UK Regulated Qualifications
I want to enroll in a top Canadian/US university for PhD program in management with options in human resource management/entrepreneurship. I do not have a BSc degree but have over 14 years professional experience and completed the following British accredited qualifications:

level 8 Qualifi diploma in strategic management and leadership;
level 7 Qualifi diploma in executive management
level 7 EBMA diploma in business administration
level 7 Qualifi diploma in human resource management
level 7 OTHM diploma in strategic leadership and management
level 6 EBMA diploma in business administration.

According to the UK framework for higher education qualifications, levels 7 and 8 are equivalent to Masters and Doctorate respectively.
I want to be a practioner-scholar and an academic PhD is needed.
How do I go about the admission process? I have communicated with 2 recruiters who are 'unable' to guide.

I don't understand. If I read the link correctly, to be at level 8 you seem to already need a doctorate. Similar for 7 and a masters.

@Prof.Buffy .According to the aforementioned website and the UK Framework for Higher Education Qualifications FHEQ, it is seen as Professional/Industry doctorate. Speaking witha UK admission specialist, they don't allow 'direct' for PhD.

Don't bother with recruiters unaffiliated with universities. Talk directly with someone at a university of choice and ask them to evaluate your qualifications and give you advice. I think there is a language/terminology issue. I still don't understand the issue.

I can't answer this for lack of information, but if you have "the equivalent of" a doctorate then no one will question your lack of a bachelors for grad admissions. The problem will be that someone has to determine what "the equivalent of a doctorate" actually means. Graduate degrees in US/Canada are normally research degrees (with a few exceptions).

@Prof.Buffy..Thank you so much for the efforts.I did that already and was told it must be 'a research masters'. Spoke with the Awarding Body, told to approach the university directly. You can review the links below for more information: https://qualifi.net/qualifi-level-8-diploma-in-strategic-management-and-leadership/
https://qualifi.net/university-progression/

Contact the admission teams of your target Universities and explain your specific situation. Your academic background is somewhat unusual (no BSc but many short professional courses), and deserve special consideration. General guidance may not apply well to your case.

@Dmitry Savostyanov....thank you for the advice.


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PhD in a probably hopeless research project
How to proceed with my PhD? I'm 18 months into it, but I don't see this project going anywhere.
Perhaps I didn't do my due diligence or researched the position before accepting it. I'm working in a team with half a dozen other PhD's, and the "research" focuses on extending and improving an extensive software system. Thus, I'm not working independently and depend on my colleagues and professor.
The professor thinks it will revolutionize our field, but that is nonsense. The few articles my colleagues have published are either conference papers or on arXiv. Much of it is equations and "fancy words" that hide the lack of novelty. I don't know if my colleagues know it or if they are cynics and don't care. Perhaps they are just here for their PhDs. To boot, the system is old, and much of my time is spent bug fixing lousy code written by PhDs who left many years ago. I feel cheated. I was promised cutting-edge research, but this is not it. Some of you will probably say that I'm not "understanding" the research. At first, I thought so too. But it's been 18 months, so I understand now that there is nothing to understand.
Everything else about the job is excellent. Both my colleagues and
professor are friendly and caring people. But they are perhaps not
that "sharp."
I don't know what to do. I don't want to cause any conflict and
perhaps become a pariah in the office, but I don't want to waste my
time. I have ideas for the research I want to do, but I don't
want to offend everyone. I don't want to quit my PhD because I want to work in science.

What part of the world are you in? Also: what is the best possible outcome for you? I can't tell if you just want your advisor to let you work on something else, or if you want to run far away and start over somewhere else.

Is the goal of the software to provide a service that other researchers will use, or do your own analysis with? Is there another piece of software that provides the same or similar tool?

much of my time is spent bug fixing bad code, written by PhD's who left the many years ago.
Believe it or not, this sounds like excellent preparation for a surprisingly large number of jobs...

Change to a new advisor if the current one doesn't seem right.

It's strange that nobody has explicitly mentioned it, but I think you should start with clearly understanding your own goals. Why do you study for PhD and what are you further career goals?
Is it just get a PhD badge and switch to industry?
Is it get a PhD and move to another "average" group?
Get a PhD and then move to a top-level group or get a position in a top-level university?
Etc.
In some of these goals (at least in the first, maybe in the second too), it does not really matter what is the quality of your research, what matters is a PhD badge. In this case, the next question to ask is very simple: what about PhD students in your group some 3-6 years older that you? Did they get their PhD? Based on what work? What do they do now? You may find that they did get a PhD with a work similar to what you are doing. In this case you have pretty good chances to get a PhD too, and that's all that matter.
In fact, sadly, in many parts of the world there are tons of really weak PhD awarded. In many places the majority of all PhDs are no novelty at all and are "hopeless" as research. Obviously, a good student should do some due diligence and avoid such places, but if you got as deep as 18 months into this program, it may be better to complete it and move on. Even such a PhD may be useful depending on your goals.
For example, I think that in industry they will not care what your research was, and moreover they will be pretty aware that there are many places like yours, and that it's not you to blame. Similarly, many "average" research groups in your city or uni may also be well aware of this, and will not judge your PhD research, but will judge your skills. So after you get a PhD, you may be able to switch to a better group and start a real research.
At the same time, if you plan to apply for some relatively top-level research group or position, then they will judge you by your work. In this case you need to get better research now. You may try discussing it with your advisor, although personally I don't think it will get any good results, or you need to switch advisor or PhD program in general.
So, think of your goals, study the careers of PhD students from your group who are 3-6 years older than you, and after that decide.
Of course, you may find that there were no PhD students in your group in recent years, or at least no successful students. That, combined with what you wrote in the question, is a very bad sign. In this case, your advisor most probably does not know what you should do to get a PhD (both formal and informal requirements), and with a very weak research you probably will not be able to figure it out yourself. In this case, run away from this advisor.

Many (most?) PhDs go through "second-year-blues". Essentially:

at the beginning the PhD candidate doesn't know enough to know the problems
then they learn what the problems are and realise that they are hard
and the topic is even more difficult than they thought
but they usually scrape something out of it by the end (which is almost never revolutionary and may in fact be "here are the problems")

Sure, there are always some people who have amazing rockstar PhDs (as with any walk of life) but the vast majority are grains of sand standing
on the shoulders of giants. In a way, research is a fractal
Dunning-Kruger effect. I was super pleased to discover that 1 person has read and cited my thesis, even if they were another PhD student of my supervisor.
After 18 months software engineering experience, regardless of getting a PhD or not, you're well equipped for a career in tech (science-related or otherwise). "I want to work in science" covers many, many things besides the stereotypical view of professors (which don't exist because they spend most of their time on grants or papers or teaching or administration or other "not science" activity). And if you think about it, many many PhDs graduate every year but the turnover in academics is much much lower. So a large majority of PhDs must not become professors and that's fine.
TL;DR think about what day-to-day bits you like the most; coding, maths, presenting, reading, etc. If you can do more of that and your PhD, great. If not, then that's fine too and perfectly normal.

I like your answer a lot (and did not post mine that would repeat a lot of what you wrote, +1). I took the liberty to add a picture that summarizes a lot of what you said at the beginning. Feel free to remove it if not appropriate.

It seems you only have two choices: discussing the issue with your supervisor/advisor or switching schools, both of which are risky. Try first talking with your advisor about your issue and see if you could possibly switch supervisors or get advice from them that way, or you could talk to your professor themselves, saying something like "my research interest is in ____ not ______, and this project does not work for me, so I want to switch to another professor as my supervisor". Alternatively, you could wait a year and apply next year to other universities. I don't believe they'll view your leaving mid degree as a bad thing, tho I think there's a thread on here that could give you more info on that. This time check the faculty's pages to see if they're more aligned with your interests instead of just going with whoever. Fill the time till next year by applying to grants and other awards, they look good on your CV, they'll help you get into the other schools easier, and they'll help you financially.

First things first: In your country, there must be laws regulating Ph.D. programs and outlining what the requirements for completing such a program are. It can go along the lines of:

Demonstrating knowledge and application of research methods
Demonstrating independence in research work
Creating publishable work
Presenting original results in domestic and international venues

Knowing these requirements can help you to gauge if your day-to-day work helps to advance towards the degree or not.
It helps to have a mentor or a broader examination board helping to gauge your progress towards said requirements.
Improving existing software and bug fixing does not sound like publishable work at all. At least not in the fields of software engineering and computer science. A novel and publishable work would be, for example, the development of a new algorithm. It would make sense to demonstrate the use of the algorithm with a simple implementation. However, anything beyond that is development work, not research.
Are there any other research groups or Ph.D. students that you can approach and gauge if you would like to work with them? If you raise any concerns, they should be about the supervision/topic falling short of the minimum bar, not your dislike of fixing bugs.

"In your country, there must be laws regulating Ph.D. programs and outlining what the requirements for completing such a program are" - it's possible this is true for the country OP is in, but in, for example, the US, this would not be true and there are no such laws, only policies of individual institutions and programs which vary by institution and program.

Still, there are regulations that both the students and supervisors should follow.

Every research team define specific roles and objectives for each member. Your part does not seem exciting. But the problem is regarding whether you are getting your PhD or not. I believe it is not hard to asses your situation:

Is there sufficient literature and articles (references) to support your project? Is it so "ground-breaking", as your professor believes? Could you prove you are contributing to the state-of-the-art in the project's corresponding field?

Based on those mentioned above, "few articles on conferences and arXiv" seems like a red flag. For example, my PhD program demands me to be the corresponding (first) author of two articles in world-class publications where the sum of their Q is five at most. That is, at least one Q2 and one Q3. That is not trivial since, at those quartiles, a thorough peer review process is expected to demand original contributions to the current state of knowledge. In my case, each research team member in their area should deliver two top-notch articles of original contributions as corresponding authors. Fixing bugs and a 5th or 6th place in the author's list won't get me anywhere. Is that your case in your PhD program?

"Second-year-blues" quoted by @afaulconbridge is the first thought I have when reading your situation. However, pointless projects also exist. An external input from a mentor not involved in your research group and not connected with your PhD, but knowking computer science and the academic world, would probably be highly welcome to better understand your situation.


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Have to give a talk soon but I no longer believe in my research
Basically, my supervisor wanted to measure variable X. X is very important to him due to some other projects we are working on. So he wanted me to give a talk on measuring X at an upcoming conference.
I was skeptical -- I thought that maybe X wasn't a real variable, but just a mathematical effect that would cancel out if we did our measurements right. My supervisor gave me some compelling arguments and convinced me that X was real and we should measure it, so I submitted an abstract to the conference and got accepted.
Now, having done the work and taken the data, I am once more convinced of my old idea that X isn't a real physical thing. The talk is coming up soon and despite the enthusiasm that appears in my abstract the best I can honestly say is that we took some measurements and got no results. I know my supervisor would be upset if I give a talk to the effect of "X doesn't matter" because that reflects negatively on his other projects. Should I cancel the talk, change the content so it's drastically different than the abstract, or something else?

Is it possible for you to give a talk that says "We thought procedure Y would show Z, but it didn't" without commenting one way or another on whether X is real (i.e. say that X can't be measured by Y, and stop short of saying it doesn't exist)? This could be useful contribution to the field, and also avoids potentially dangerous politics with your advisor.

@ff524: That sounds like a good idea.  One concern though: even if he remains perfectly agnostic on the issue in the talk itself, he may get asked a question afterwards which presses him to take a stance.  So if he is going to give a talk like this, he should think very carefully about what he will, and won't, say in response to such questions.

Can you please say what sort of talk it is?  Is this an internal seminar, an international conference, an invited seminar at another institution, etc?  The "stakes" and audience of the talk matter in how I would recommend that you proceed.

What does your advisor say now that you did the work?  Can he give any compelling explanation for the results?

Nobody reads abstracts, just talk about something else ;-)

Do a practice talk with your advisor before going to the conference. Do it early. It will be a good time to discuss how the talk should be organized in order to  highlight the context of your measurement in the whole project and its relative importance.
It is common for a student working on a small piece of problem (and not necessarily looking at its entire context), to go back and forth between feeling A) the piece is obvious or unimportant; to B) the piece is pretty cool after all; then back to A again.
At worst - if it seems as if your piece really is not so relevant, then I expect he will help you organize the talk so that it still engages the audience. (Not a bad skill to practice. And, if you don't pull it off - at least in my field, if the topic of the talk seems unimportant to the audience, the bad smell lingers longer on the professor/advisor than on the student).
(Of course, also in my subfield, giving a talk at a conference or workshop usually means that we are giving a talk about work-in-progress still unpublished. So strategies may be different if there is a required paper involved for every talk).
But more likely, with working on the practice talk and the discussion with the advisor - you will develop more of an appreciation of how that small piece of work fits and may even develop an appreciation of its other subtleties that interest the professor. In a situation as you describe, I place my bets on the professor instinct on the topic.

You shouldn't cancel the talk if you've proved a smart idea wrong, because negative results are as important as positive results.  You also shouldn't cancel it if you can give a "work in progress" talk if you still haven't proved it right or wrong.  But you shouldn't give a talk that just panders to your conception of what your supervisor wants.  It's impossible to be sure from the outside, but I think there are at least three possible scenarios:

You still haven't found the effect or fully understood what your supervisor is teaching you, but it's existence is still an open question.  Be very aware this could still be true.  You should give the talk about your current status of the project, and hope to get feedback that helps you find the answer.  It's OK to say in the talk you consider it still an open question and that you and your supervisor have different ideas about what the final outcome is likely to be.  In fact, you'll probably get more feedback if you say that.
You were in fact right before, and now you've proved it.  It doesn't sound like you're here yet, but this would be a great thing to do.  Your supervisor may be more willing to help you demonstrate this than you realise.  First, your supervisor may be more interested in truth than you realise, or second, your work may help clarify your supervisor's other contributions in ways you don't see yet.  But the absence of proof of an idea is not the same as proving the idea is wrong; this takes real work.
You are being asked to promote academic fraud.  If you really think this is the case, then you might want to cancel the talk and change supervisor.  Or you might want to give the same talk as talk 1, show all the sides of the issue that you can, and get feedback on what other people think.

Academic fraud makes the papers, it does happen, and so does self deception even by famous PIs.  Nevertheless, the solution being one of the first two options is far more likely, and you should probably work towards one or the other.

This is not a bad position to be in! and yes you should give the talk. Couple of things here:

To Be or Not to Be: Yes, it is important to find "X" holds in your research, however finding the "X" is actually not holding is not a bad thing; all you need is to have an explanation for it.
Ambiguity Is the Problem: It raises a red flag when the researcher doesn't know what he/she is talking about. You are not in this position so I suggest to go ahead with your presentation.
Transparency Is the Key: You might said in your submission that "X" matter, but now when you go to your presentation be transparent. It raises another red flag when the speaker wants to BS his/her way through presentation.

Main Lesson Here: I think the main lesson here is that, you learn to think more independently about your problems, becase it might be the case where the supervisor is not right about the problem/solution; and you are the one that needs to have explanations about your problems/solutions.

Ultimately I agree with Carol. If you trust your supervisor, you should make sure you and them are on the same page. Relay your concerns to your supervisor, and they can use whatever has convinced them to help make your talk engaging to the audience.
In other words, you might be wrong that the results are uninteresting, and if you're not wrong, your supervisor can help you figure out what is interesting for an audience.

I would say don't cancel the talk. Mathematics, Science is built on the foundation of Theories many of which remain unproven today. The important thing is you are making a Case for the existence of X, you probably have not got there yet but what is to say that speaking about it at the conference wouldn't spark a conversation that invariably helps you see the path to the solution.
In Academia, we don't give up we push through.

Are you suggesting that the OP give a presentation making a case for the importance of X, even though the evidence he/she has collected so far suggests the opposite?

No, but he does say that there is a possibility of X being a mathematical effect, So maybe tweak the presentation to talk about a journey to find X either as a variable or as an effect based on what you have so far

"The important thing is you are making a Case for the existence of X" The point of the OP's question is that he has no case to make.  So you don't seem to address his question at all.  "In Academia, we don't give up we push through."  Right, and also:  "Agriculture is important. Our rivers are full of fish. You cannot have freedom without liberty. Our future lies ahead."

I'm suggesting looking at this issue through the prism of abstraction in mathematics

I get that people are disliking this answer, and it could be phrased better, but if I take your advice correctly, another way to put it is "every talk is a chance to improve what you are working on." I have actually been at several talks where people had become skeptical of their work, and either the audience convinced them of the value thereof, or showed them a way to improve it to where the work would be good. If we only gave talks when we were 100% certain we were right, we'd make a lot less progress, and have a lot fewer ideas to work with.

This is exactly what I mean. why anyone would want to encourage the OP to cancel a talk is beyond me. If I don't believe in something does that disqualify any rationalisations I might have on said topic?

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Can a professor make your final pass or fail?
I current have an 85% in his class but my final is pass or fail. I’m horrible at math and have really tried my hardest to get that b but my professors math final is either you pass it or if you fail it, you fail the course! Is allowed? I also asked around and it seems he’s the only professor that is doing this.

What did it say in the syllabus at the beginning of the semester?

In general, professors have quite a bit of leeway in how they design exams. How much depends on your institution's policies, which we don't know.

To expand upon @ff524's comment: I've had a several of math classes where 70% or more of one's grade was based on the final exam. While not an explicit "fail the exam, fail the course", if you god a score of, say, 50% on the final, you were likely to fail the course just because of how the percentages broke down. The Syllabus will often list the total grading percentages for the course.

Why wouldn't it be allowed?

Legally? You didn't say what country you are in, but I'm not aware of any country that regulates courses at this level.
Your university's rules? You didn't say what university you are in, so it's impossible to say for sure. In general, though, the "instructor of record" has the authority to make decisions about how a course will be graded.

Broadly speaking, this does not seem like a bizarre policy that some wacko professor implemented; I've actually seen this in other math departments. I guess the philosophy is that most entry-level math courses are about skills: they do not want to pass you onto more advanced courses unless you know these foundational skills well enough to do them in a measurable way. (I realize that you may not personally plan to take more advanced courses, but the principle is the same).
Anyway: yes, unless your university has a policy that forbids it (e.g., a policy saying that all professors of a given course have to grade the same way), this policy is almost certainly allowed.

Since you asked your question so general (without specifying a country), I can also answer: yes, they can. In my country, for example, lecture courses are to be graded by only one single final exam.
It may be that this is not the case in your institution and that your professor is not allowed to grade in this way.
Note, however, that many professors do weird things while nobidy cares. (I had a professor who openly annoced that women should not be allowed to study and all women failed his course, it was widely known, but nobody cared. This is of course an abosolutely horrible and extreme example - I also had other professors who went over the rules and nobody cared.)
So what I advise you is: Don't just ask "around", but ask specific people who know these kind of issues are are sympathethic to you. For example, your student's union or your academic advisor. Those people should know if this grading is allowed, and, if no, if it is possible in your institution to do something against it.


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Writing multiple areas of interest in SOP
So first let me introduce myself. I am planning to apply for masters in mathematics  in this year. I am student of bsc. 3rd year of Mathematics. Although my initial interest was to study about algebraic number theory, to know about algebraic number theory deeply, i think one should know about commutative algebra also. So I started a readership  on commutative algebra under a professor. But as the time passed I also stared to grow liking for commutative algebra. And now I want to explore more commutative algebra before diving deep into algebric number theory, so here comes the problem.
In the Sop while applying to foreign is it okay to write about having multiple subject of interest as one is prerequisite of other. Or should I specify one of them. I really want to study algaebric number theory but I also want to know more about commutative algebra.
Any help will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

The Statement of Purpose should reflect your interest in your mathematics and give an impression of both you as a scholar and why the department you are applying to should think that you will be successful. As such, you have great freedom in explaining what you find exciting and interesting, and if that includes your desire to look into multiple areas, then that seems like a fine approach to writing a SoP.
In other words, I would not overthink this: Write why you want to go to grad school and why anyone should think that you will succeed there!
(As a comment on the side: I would suggest you spend more time proof reading what you write. There is a typo in the title of your question, and multiple language and grammar mistakes in the question itself. I don't know whether English is your first language, but at the very least typos are completely avoidable; not proofreading what you write just makes you look sloppy and unprofessional.)

A statement of purpose offers the selection committee an insight into who you are beyond your grades and credentials. Telling them you like more than one topic is absolutely fine.
More generally, it is important that you emphasize your recent, refutable, achievements. Recent, as in not “I started loving mathematics since I got an A in first grade math”, but rather your achievements in university (especially if you did anything extraordinary like research, teach, participate in math olympiads etc). Talk about lecturers you particularly liked and how they inspired you, etc. if you make a claim about yourself it has to be refutable. “I am passionate about commutative algebra” is an empty statement; “I am passionate about commutative algebra, and am studying it with professor X” is not. If you say you’re hard-working, you need to provide evidence that this is the case.