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Are gap semesters frowned upon in graduate school applications? Should I explain mental health situation that led to the gap?
Disclaimer: not all of what follows is relevant to the question.
I am a math student currently doing a Master’s. I plan on taking a break in the spring semester because due to many personal circumstances, my mental health had severely declined (I attempted suicide twice), and I completely lost my focus.
I am really passionate about mathematics and I do a lot of extracurricular reading. I have a GPA of about 4 (from a fairly reputable school) and I have excellent relationships with the professors in my department, so I can guarantee strong recommendation letters (especially that they seemed totally fine with my current plan). Furthermore, although I am not from an English-speaking country, I have a very good TOEFL score, and to me, the GRE is pretty much a piece of cake.
Ultimately, my goal is to get into a top 5 school. I decided to get a Master’s for that very purpose. I am worried about two things: first, that I do not have an undergraduate research experience (I never had a real opportunity anyway, though I will have written a thesis by the end of my Master's); second, and most importantly, I am worried that this break which I am about to take will look bad on my application, especially that I will be having a lot of therapy sessions and that I have a lot of personal and social challenges to face, so I am probably not going to do any math whatsoever. Also, it doesn’t seem like I’m getting any job in the meantime because there aren’t many offers and most of my applications have been declined.
So my question is: would such a gap semester look bad on my application? (or at least get frowned upon by the admissions committee?)
And if so: How much should I go into details about my situation? Should I mention real-life incidents, or should I just say that I had excruciating circumstances, and I had to back off and I couldn't find something interesting to do in the meanwhile?

I'm going to give a slightly different advice from the previous answers.  I don't want to counsel dishonesty here, but I think it would be very unwise to write anything in your personal statement that suggests any mental health problems, especially if the only thing that needs explaining is taking a semester off.
I want to emphasize that I think the stigma around mental health problems is very unfair and based on ignorance.  However, the people reading these applications will have probably internalized it to some degree: if you, for example, mention attempting to commit suicide, that will be the most vivid and memorable thing from your application, whereas your master's degree ending a semester early will be barely noticeable.  I think you will probably be fine not mentioning it at all, but if you do, I would just say it is for health reasons, or to prepare for moving to another country (which are, of course, true).  One of the primary things an admissions committee will have in mind is whether a student is capable of finishing the program, while not creating a lot of trouble for people in the department. They have had pain-in-the-butt students before, and would really prefer to avoid having any more.  Mentioning "personal and social challenges" or "excruciating circumstances" (which, incidentally, sounds very strange in English; it's hard to imagine what you really mean by it) is not going to give them confidence that you won't make a lot of trouble for them.

I got a little lost in your projected chronology, but I'm not going to exert myself to trace through it because under the circumstances, I imagine it is hard for you to know exactly what the future will bring anyway.
I would encourage you to speak with the professors who are going to write letters of recommendation for you, and your director of graduate studies, about your concerns.  It sounds like your professors have your best interests at heart.
However, in general, a good approach for applications, when health or mental health issues have caused a delay, or a gap, is to write a short statement saying pretty much that.  There is no need to go into detail, and in fact you can just say "health" issues, and omit "mental."
Regarding how much damage can be done by a gap: one gap of a semester or two, in and of itself, as a blip against a strong backdrop, if handled in a way that would not flag you as a risky admissions prospect, would not have a damaging effect.
Women often take some time off when giving birth or adopting.  As academic opportunities expand for women, this is getting more and more normalized.  Men sometimes take some significant time off for family reasons as well.
I wonder if you might want to consider auditing one course during your upcoming treatment period?  It need not be in your field.  But whether or not it would make sense to do that would be a very personal decision.
I wish you all the best for your recovery.

Now-a-days university's do what is considered a "holistic review". They will ask for a personal statement on why you want to be granted admissions into a particular program. There, you can write out your situation for them to take into consideration. Without that, on paper it could look bad because on paper, it shows that you did not try to work on a research project and perhaps you took a semester off because school is easy. (Again, I stress that this is what it might look like on paper.) With your personal statement, you could shed light onto your situation.
You should at least try to apply because if you don't then you will never know what could have happened. However, as with anything you apply for, there are other people out there competing for the same spot. People who may have better grades and experience. Your focus would need to be on how you differentiate from others and how you can contribute to the program in your own unique way.

Thank you. How much should I go into details about my situation? Should I mention real-life incidents, or should I just say that I had excruciating circumstances, and I had to back off and I couldn't find something interesting to do in the meanwhile?

@Martin You can go into as much detail as you feel comfortable. You can be as specific as you want or as general as you want. These are personal circumstances. I will say this - excruciating circumstances can mean different things to different people. What might be a big deal to you may not be a big deal to someone else. (Again, this is all on paper.)

Though the reviewers above make some excellent points, if indeed your GRE scores and academic records are as strong as you say I would not worry about this gap time. I believe resumes are looked at carefully but not quite as carefully as seeing a gap as such and tossing you aside or even questioning the reasons, especially if the rest of your application is appealing. I have learned this both as an applicant and reviewer of applications for learning programs.
The most salient point made above in my opinion is "talking with your recommendation writers". It maybe good for them to know your plans to apply to grad school and see if they will support you in advance, gap or no gap. I'm currently a doctoral student at a "top 5" school in my field, but that's not why I'm hear. I came because I thought the best people to work with would be here. Rather than worrying about rank, I would suggest you consider the exact work you would like to do and WHO you would like to do that work with. With the right community everything else, including your jobs afterward, will fall into place just fine.
For the challenges you face, life and taking care of yourself is more important than any career move. If a school does not want you because you took care of yourself then they do not deserve you - and would you really want to be there anyway knowing they only care about what you produce while not supporting you personally?
Hope you get to take a deep breath and take the time you need to get things straight. You can take care of the rest afterward, and your allies will appear to help you along the way and guide you to the next steps for where you want to go. Good luck and best!


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Using Others Work - To What Level Is It Okay?
From September I will be starting my final year project at a UK university.
I will be developing some software. However the software I wish to create has multiple "modules" to it. Approximately 16 modules for 16 different functions.
A fair few of these modules have been created before by various people and the code is completely open source with no licensing restrictions.
I will be writing a lot of the code myself, but I do not see the point in "re-inventing the wheel" by writing some code which will do the exact same thing as some software already out there.
Is it okay to re-use their code in my project? To what level is it okay to do this? 2/16 modules? 6/16? I do not want to go over the top into the plagiarism world. Obviously all work would be credited etc.

Ask your professor.  If you were my student, I'd say, "yes, with proper credit."  But I am not the one who gets to decide in your case.

You absolutely must not use the work of others without attribution. If you credit everything you use in an adequate way, there is absolutely no limit on how much stuff from other people you can use. However, for your project to be successful, you will need to have a sufficient amount of your own contributions. To see what counts as sufficient, look at past projects and ask your supervisor.

Writing your own software for the sake of not using something that is out there is disingenuous - unless your goal is to learn how to create, say, a quick sort routine from scratch, you should absolutely "stand on the shoulders of giants". By using whatever exists, you will be able to "see further" - the intellectual effort and contribution will come from "boldly going where no man has gone before".
So

full attribution of open source material used
emphasis on something new
work even harder than if you rolled your own code from scratch: since you had a head start you will be expected to reach a higher level

And of course check with your course director / advisor / supervisor. The above makes sense to me, but it may depend on what the educational goal of the project actually is.

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Switching majors at a critical stage
I'm about to finish my 4th semester as a pure mathematics undergraduate. I took one introductory course to programming in my first semester, and another more advanced one lately. Although it was only one course out of several others I took last semester, I spent much more time on the computer than on the math books, and I conjectured that I would probably be happier as a programmer than as a mathematician.
The problem is that I spent most of the past 3-4 years doing nothing but mathematics. Practicing problem-solving, developing critical thinking, establishing deep knowledge in foundational mathematics and growing very good general knowledge about advanced math topics and history of mathematics. Besides, I get top grades in my college, and I do like what I am doing.
In brief, I can see myself as a promising person in the world of mathematics. I am confident that in comparison to most of my peers, I am more powerful in this domain. And this, in particular, is what makes me hesitate about even thinking of switching my major.
Above all, I enjoyed that programming course much more than I enjoyed any other math course that I took (except, perhaps, metric topology and some abstract algebra). And I have a feeling that this is what I should truly go for.
What is the best decision that could be done? Especially that I still have only one year to get my Bachelor degree. If I would switch my major, I'll have lost one year of my life because of the regulations in our college.
Thank you.

Why did this get a downvote? Please clarify. What SE site should I post this to, instead?

Problem solving and critical thinking are extremely useful skills for a computing career. Have you considered topics on the boundary of computing and mathematics, such as encryption or proof of program correctness?

@PatriciaShanahan not really. I don't have any perspective about the possible options in front of me. If I want to pursue such topics, on the boundary of computing and math, what kind of degree should I have?

@piaresquared You have the maturity (and hopefully the mentors) to seek out what projects at the boundary of math and computing are of interest to you. For interdisciplinary work like that, an undergrad degree in math is fine. What is more relevant is what you have discovered to be of interest.

I'm not sure why this hasn't already been pointed out, but ac.se is fundamentally the wrong place to be asking this question. You should speak with people who know you, your circumstances, your history, and your university policies. Answers given here are going to be vaguely helpful at best and potentially harmful.

Change-of-interest among mathematicians is more common than many would have imagined. Reasons vary, some decided to do something more applied, some decided to work in the industry for the better pay, some decided to work in a more dynamic environment than the academia...
I can assure you that the time you spent on mathematics is time well spent for your intellectual development and that your advanced math training will be a valuable asset wherever you go. Even though you may not be solving abstract algebra or real analysis problems for your future career, it's the analytical skills that you're equipped with that will make a difference between you and other candidates. Mathematicians, if well trained, develop unique insights to problems and are often highly detail-oriented.
If you want to switch to computer science, there are a number of Masters Programs in computer science that will accept non-CS majors. In fact, if you have taken sufficiently many advanced courses in computer science, you may apply to grad school in computer science right away without going through the (often exorbitantly costly) masters program. Many of my classmates have done that and successfully transitioned into computer science.
Last but not least, speak to your academic advisor and discuss your situation.
Good luck!

Switching one’s major (or subject altogether) is generally something that should not be done light-heartedly. But there are often valid reasons for doing so and it can take some time to notice these reasons.
Assuming you took some time to choose the subject you studied (which it sounds like you did) there are probably good reasons why you chose it. Probably you like maths (you hinted it be fun), maybe you were just good in maths at school or maybe you just wanted to be one of the cool nerds with glasses. One student at my university started studying chemistry because she found it fascinating and liked it at school. I started my master’s majoring in biochemistry because I liked the work we did in our practical courses and because it sounded interesting.
Once you’re now thinking about switching majors, something from your motivation must have changed. I’m inferring from what you said, that you spent more time (and maybe even had more fun) sitting at the PC doing some coding work. That’s a very positive way to think. The student I was talking about above underestimated the workload she was going to put into chemistry studies. She also failed a practical course (that really wasn’t dramatic; it’s a course that more than 10 % fail in their first attempt including me who’s doing a chemistry PhD now) and finally started spending more time with her other scholarly love, Japanese. In my case, I still (would) enjoy the practical parts but I underestimated the amount of rote memorisation required for passing the exams — I’m bad at that.
Once you’ve identified the true reason why you want to switch, you need to debate whether switching is an appropriate action or not. The student I keep mentioning switched to Japanese at a different university closer to her home. I still think that she just made herself too much work, tried to understand stuff way too deeply at a way too early level. She could have stuck with chemistry if she had tried to learn less (yes, that’s sometimes a thing). I haven’t spoken with her for quite a long time, but I assume she thinks it’s the right choice she made (She did take a long time considering it). In my case, switching majors from biochemistry to inorganic chemistry was essential to pass my master’s.
Now onto you. First off, programming or computer sciences are a lot closer to maths than Japanese is to chemistry (although they both sound similar to some, I am told). They’re not as close as inorganic and biochemistry in my opinion, though. It’s highly possible from my point of view to enter similar master’s programmes with both degrees, especially if you’re looking somewhere where both of them meet. You will also have gained valuable skills that you list in your question — problem-solving, critical thinking etc.

Do you think that you can fulfill the requirements and achieve the degree your aiming for now?
Do you think that your final mark might be (significantly?) worse if you switch?
Are there computer science/programming programmes that allow a pure mathematician to start them?

If you answered those three and a half questions with yes then don’t switch. If you answered the half question with no and the others with yes, I would recommend you don’t switch. Only if you answer no to all three questions should you definitely switch.

The most important note of the whole text: Have a chat with an advisor if grains of doubt remain, e.g. if you’re not sure about fulfilling the requirements of whichever master’s programme you’re interested in due to your non-programming maths bachelor degree.

Good question (+1). Generally, I agree with @Jan's advice (also +1), with the exception of the last sentence - I don't think that a conversation with an advisor is or should be the critical factor. Ultimately, I believe that the main critical factor should be your gut feeling, of course, combined with practical considerations, some of which Jan mentioned. I think that a math degree, especially undergraduate, provides a solid foundation for your future career, regardless of your decisions along the way, such as to continue career in mathematics or switch to more applied areas, such as computer programming, operations research and data science.
Therefore, my recommendation is to continue with your current program, while testing some specific areas, where possible (i.e., for programming, participating in open source software projects might be a good idea), unless you are absolutely sure that you have to switch majors. Let me finish my advice with mentioning a popular saying/idiom, which seems to be appropriate here: "Don’t change horses in the middle of the stream". Good luck!

Yeah, the advisor chat is meant for situations of doubt. If, say, s/he wants information on whether s/he is suited for a computer science master with his/her degree, because s/he is unsure about details, requirements and whatnot. Maybe I should put more emphasis on the if grains of doubt remain part?

@Jan: I would just add clarification (the 2nd sentence in your comment above).

Some points to consider:
1) You don't need a CS degree to become a programmer (as Aleksandr says) or to study CS at a graduate level (as Dinosaur says). There's nothing to stop you from completing your math major while spending as much time as possible on the programming that you like. When you graduate, getting a programming job should not be substantially trickier than if you had majored in CS.
2) Just because you are a promising person in the world of math does not mean you are obligated to fulfill that promise (as dinosaur says). Only do math if it's what you want. Many people with great promise drop out of the field at every stage of a career, and that's okay. Some examples:

Undergrad: Bill Gates
Grad School: Reid Barton
Professor: James Simons (whose impact on mathematics is in my mind greater as a philanthropist than it was as a mathematician)

3) You can come back, if math is truly where your heart is. I know several people who have turned away, be it towards programming, finance or elsewhere, only to return.
4) Towards (3), programming skills are incredibly useful in many areas of mathematics.
From what you've described, I would follow Aleksandr's advice and complete your math major (it sounds like you might already be done!) with an eye towards developing skills as a programmer. If this is not possible, keep in mind that losing a year (and it wouldn't be truly lost) is a far better option than failing to notice that your current path is a waste. Remember that, even if you stay in the academy, your formal education is only a small part of what you will learn. Start casting forth for what you are most passionate for, and good luck!

I see Good answers here.
Adding for those,
I'm a Java Developer working almost 2 years in the industry now. Currently I'm following my Bachelors degree in Software Engineering.
I was one of the bullets in my class in High school for Maths. But Unfortunately I choose the path to programming. I know not everyone will agree with the word I wrote 'Unfortunately' in my last sentence. Personally I am really really worrying about the decision that I dropped my Maths degree.
Please don't make that mistake!
There are lot of paths you can choose to continue when you have a Mathematics degree in your hand. (Games; of course comes to my mind, There are many)
Continue your Maths degree. After that you can have some industry recognized exams(e.g. Oracle certifications, Microsoft certifications). These exams will not take too much time to finish. As Aleksandr said, you have strong foundation if you have a Degree in Mathematics. That's my opinion for this good question.
Good Luck!

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Listing Awards on CV as a Group?
I work in a field where a group of about 20 people all have a different role on a project.  When a project wins an award in this field, they typically do not list people individually.  How can I put awards like this on my CV?

Same as you would a normal in-line item, only you'd mention at the end that you were a member of a group name. You can also mention role.

John Doe Award of Excellence, Annual Competition of Cooking Tasty Foods in Somewhere, AA on 1 Jan 1999, as head chef of Team Mashed Potatoes

Let's say you weren't head chef, but rather chief bottle washer (or some other lowly position).  Would you still format this in the same way?

@anorton You can say "Team Member" if you wish.

Yes, but you should mention that you are a designer, so "Acme Co., as a Designer." And I would normally split the year off to where the award is mentioned


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Methodology of defining a research topic
My adviser asked me to come up with a research topic for a PhD student. As I'm expected to graduate in early 2016, my mentor considered this a good "exercise" for a tenure track career. Of course, this is not intended to be final, I am supposed to propose to my adviser this topic and then it will be decided whether it is good enough to suggest a direction of a student's research.
Based on the field of interest, I intend to propose a problem which I find interesting (and would gladly research myself, if the time permitted). To that purpose, I defined a number of milestones, covering some likely scenarios in the research progress. I also prepared around 20 papers, some of which serve as an introduction to the problems of the field of interest, while others are state-of-the-art approaches closely related to the topic.
This is basically more than I had when I begun my research. So, in that regard, I'm confident that I did a reasonable job so far. Of course, if you have any remarks, don't hesitate to add them.
My problem is that it would currently be very hard for me to come up with more than 2-3 topics prepared in that way.
Also, I can't help but wonder whether the topic I would suggest is "good enough" to lead the student to conduct quality research and eventually to a PhD. In this particular case, my mentor will shape the topic and guide the student so there is no worry. Besides that, I am confident that the suggested topic is a problem in the field, as I thought and investigated it a long before the request came from my adviser.
I find it a bit hard to believe that I'll always have such problems ready in my head, so I assume that I'll have to start from somewhere in forming one.
So, what methodology should I follow when defining research topics?

Not sure if this is an answer: I keep a handy "idea notebook" and keep writing any ideas that come to mind while I am doing something else. After some time has passed, I come back to those ideas noted earlier. Some of them get repeated which I feel like they are worth pursuing. May be someday when I am in a position to do so, I will either pursue them myself or along with some students.

I think this is a great exercise.  One of the hardest things to cope with in the transition from graduate student to PI is broadening your focus as you move from a "worker" role toward a "manager" role in research.  This doesn't mean you're not going to be continuing to research, but you'll likely have a lot less time to do it than you think, and you need to prepare for how you will supervise where previously you would execute.
That said, I think you're currently approaching this too much like you are going to be the one doing the research, rather than their supervisor.  I would suggest limiting yourself to finding a topic, milestones, and rough criteria for success: the rest is what you want to coach a student as they look into the background, compare in depth with alternate approaches, etc.
The other thing I would advise is that you need to separate your research goals from the goals you want the student to work on.  Every student is a gamble: some work out well, while others drop out, burn out, should never have been in the program to begin with, or just plain aren't a good match for you or your research area.  For this reason, I believe you should never have a student be critical path on an aspect of your research that deeply matters to you: that will put you in a position where you are likely to be trying to push them and micromanage them, because you are worried about the success of the work, rather than the success of the student.
Instead, think about the "paths not taken" on your research, the things that you think would be interesting and scientifically valuable, but that you aren't going to do, the sort of stuff that pads out many papers' "discussion" and "future work" sections.  These sorts of "sibling projects" to your critical path are likely to be a rich vein of seeds for student projects.

I'm just a new PhD, so be careful of my advice.  (I have been teaching about 10 different MSc courses though).
I disagree with your adviser.  IMHO, it should be the PhD student who picks the detailed topic (which maybe you will reject).  Of course, you may provide some very strong constraints, such as that it must be relevant to the funding projects you have, etc.  If you don't like their choice, you can always steer them in your direction.  However, force the student to think and express what they have a passion for (again, based on your strong constraints). With my approach, perhaps the student will come up with a topic, that in your opinion, is better than what you came up with.
I don't think you should prepare 20 papers for the student.  Force the student to do the Scopus, ProQuest advanced searches.  Perhaps you will not like the results of their searches.  If so, just steer them a little bit, in the right direction (perhaps with a added keywords to the search).  If a student's search is rejected by you, they will be more in the listening mode, whereby they can gain knowledge from you when you explain exactly what they did wrong.  For example, you might reject their search and inform the student that their search results included papers with no citations (which you will perhaps not allow).


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It is alright to include students' first names in a teaching statement?
Is it alright to include students' first names in a teaching statement, or would this come off as weird and too personal? Or a privacy concern?
You often hear the advice to include specific stories that exemplify some of the things you claim about yourself in your teaching statement. I've got an anecdote involving two students I want to tell. My thought is that including their names will demonstrate that this wasn't just some frivolous incident that I'm talking up; that I honestly got to know these students. Also, I think the story would read more clearly if I can give them names rather than pronouns.

Do you have a way to ask their permission?

@Buffy Yeah, I could probably dig up their email addresses. Then I've just got to hope they still check (or forward) their university email.

What country are you in? Conventions for using formal vs informal names, and whether first names are considered formal enough, vary widely by country. (Having said that, it's a law of the internet that if people don't say where they are from, and don't understand that other countries are different, then they're probably American, and someone who says in their profile that they are from "UC Riverside" without saying where in the world that is is almost certainly American.)

@MichaelKay Well, it does also say I'm from California on my profile. ;)

@MichaelKay But also, I'm not just interested in the answer to this question for American schools. What if I'm applying to university jobs outside the US, and I want to know if this would be unusual there? If there is a strikingly different convention in a certain country or region, I'd like to know. Also in general this question isn't just for me, but for every future visitor of the site who has the same question, wherever they may be from.

I wouldn't be able to answer the question for my own country (the UK) without understanding better what you mean by a "teaching statement" (more particularly, who gets to read it, do they know the students, etc). And I certainly wouldn't be able to answer it for any other country (the notion that everyone outside the US is "international" is a common American fallacy).

@MichaelKay Your comment suggests that "teaching statements" aren't necessarily a usual part of a university job application outside the US. Is this so? Just to establish what it is from my perspective, when applying to university teaching jobs (in the US at least) that require teaching duties, part of the application is to submit a "teaching statement" or "teaching philosophy". It's usually a 1-2 page essay on what/how/why you teach, and different universities weight it differently among your application materials.

I think you should avoid giving their full names, as opposed to just their first names unless they give permission for it. Better, using an alias for the students protects their privacy but doesn't cost you any thing in the telling of the stories. Alice and Bob, as usual.
But some readers might actually wonder whether you were too personal with the students, not keeping a proper "academic distance". I often tell a story about two students who succeeded after failure. It is a great story, and it works without names. If they heard my story they would recognize themselves, I think. But no one else would. Not even their classmates at the time.

I agree with the suggestion to use aliases, and I'd add that you might say, in parentheses or in a footnote, something like "the names are fictitious but the students are real."

@AndreasBlass "The names have been changed to protect the innocent" :-)

When I need aliases, I always use the published list of hurricane names from NOAA. It alternates male/female and there are six cycles through the alphabet worth of names. Plenty of variety without a whole lot of effort.

I like the NOAA one.  I tend to go with Muppets or Looney Tunes characters -- that can give a quick image of the student's personality, and yet it's clearly fake.   (My use case is showing students samples of how  in prior years, students had done self-assessment or team-assessment type of tasks, complete with my feedback.  I try to show an excellent one, a pretty good one, and one that's barely acceptable, so they can understand the range of potential responses.  Since these are personality-based in part, obvious pseudonyms help.)

I would just use made-up names, made obvious by using scarequotes on the first usage.  Personally, I feel Alice and Bob is a little too generic (like a math problem).
I would probably choose two from Renee, Sophia, Marcos, and Hans.  Names with some interesting oomph to them.  I would keep the sex the same.  Not because gender is a part of the story (well I doubt it is).  But just you will have an easier time picturing the students in your mind and writing about them if you don't change the gender. Or possibly referring to them on the spot during an interview (no pronoun slips).

Or keep the initial of each name the same: Jeremy -> Jacob, Helen -> Harriet, etc.

You could easily use alphabetically-sequential names, as we use in logic problems, communications, and so on. Typically this starts "Alice, Bob, Charlie", but you may wish to vary this for your paper if student gender is important.
The sequence of names often also uses "Eve" in communications and cryptography, as an "eavesdropper". It would probably be more appropriate to change this for your paper

The asker is writing a teaching statement for a job application, not a research paper.

@DavidRicherby Why should that matter?  The names "Alice" and "Bob" are not highly technical concepts which can only be understood by experts. :)  Weather system names follow the same concept of sequentially-initialled first names too.  Given that we have this existing scheme which is familiar to anyone who's ever heard a weather forecast, and which is used in all technical areas where applying names for actors can help comprehension, it would seem strange not to use it.  And the very fact that all names are alphabetically-sequential tells readers implicitly that this scheme is being used.

Your answer twice says "your paper", which clearly indicates that you're giving advice about how to write a paper. Advice on how to write a paper is not necessarily applicable to writing personal teaching statements (e.g., I would always use "I" in the latter, but probably never a paper) so, at the very least, you should edit your answer to make it obvious that you do intend your advice to apply to teaching statements.

Personally, I find that using Alice, Bob, and so on, in sequence, looks highly contrived, which detracts from the message a personal statement is supposed to convey. In a research paper, that artificiality doesn't matter at all but, in a teaching statement, it looks insincere to me.

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Is it typical to not list class instructors during undergraduate enrollment?
Enrollment for undergraduate students has just started at my university. Perusing the classes for my department though, only a couple of the dozens of classes being offered have an instructor specified. I recall hearing discussion in the past about this, so this isn't new this term.
I want to know if this is a typical thing that universities or individual academic departments do. And if so is there a usual explanation for it?

I'd guess it's uncommon, but is done in my department. My loose understanding is it's so rigorous/unpopular instructors don't have so few students their sections don't run.

@DanielR.Collins That crossed my mind as being a possible reason. But isn't that unethical?

Honestly, it may be unusual and not my preference (I've asked for my name to be visible). I tend to be pretty judgmental, but IMO it doesn't rise to "unethical". Seems roughly equal to cases where only one instructor teaches a required course.

Students will only see what they want to see, whatever the "REAL" reason for the inclusion, or not, of the names... Another conspiracy theory...

At my university, often this means they have an instructor lined up but the teaching contract isn't signed yet. I'm on an AY contract, so my fall classes say "Staff" until the week before school starts, because that's when the contract is ready. My spring classes have my name on them from day one because I've already signed the contract.

@DanielR.Collins Oh I quite disagree with those being roughly equal; there's a difference between deliberately withholding a choice from the students versus there simply being no choice.

I studied in the United States (bachelor's and PhD). In my school, it was very common practice to list "TBA" (to be announced) for course professors, especially undergraduate courses. Through my years in the university, including becoming a part-time instructor myself as a PhD student, I got to know that it was pretty much always a logistic issue. Even if the department knew which teachers would be teaching the course, as long as they had not finalized the exact teaching assignment of who taught exactly which section of the course at exactly which times, such unfinalized assignments would be listed as "TBA".
In contrast, with graduate courses, there was usually only one section of a course each semester and so the known instructor could readily be listed as soon as it was confirmed.
In my school, students also complained about it. It is easy for students who would like to avoid a teacher with a bad reputation to suspect that the administration was trying to hide this information in order to make sure that the bad teacher got enough students in their class. But based on experience after several years in the same school, I don't think there is any reason to suspect ulterior motives; simple logistics led to this being a repeated practice whenever there are multiple sections of the same course.
(But since often when there are multiple sections taught by the same set of instructors each year, there will sometimes be a "bad teacher" among them; so, students would self-confirm their suspicions that the administration is deliberately trying to frustrate attempts to not choose a bad teacher.)
This is just a personal example, but I think the dynamics are very similar in many other universities.

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


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What is done in a workshop? How does it differ from an academic conference?
I have done some research on this, but I still don't know what is carried out in a workshop. What activities are arranged? How are they different from conferences?

According to this PHD Comics, you need to call it a "Workshop" if you need to pay extra ;)

The reason why it is difficult to tell what workshops are about is because it is a catch-all category that many different types of academic meeting are labelled as. To illustrate, let me give examples of the nature of some of the events that I have attended in the last two years that all use the same word "workshop" to describe themselves:

A "baby conference" attached to a full-size conference, where the small meeting simply isn't large enough to meet on its own yet.
A project meeting for researchers who are all funded by the same large grant
A planning and discussion session aimed at helping determine the direction of a field
A joint industry/academia fact-finding meeting sponsored by an industry consortium
A specialty conference attended by around 100 people
A premier conference attended by several hundred people
A working meeting by a standards development group

The length of these meetings ranged from a single afternoon to a full week. Their programs ranged from nothing but loosely structured discussion to a full-on tightly packed conference schedule.  The level of peer review ranged from non-applicable to minimal to full-on single-blind review and revision.
In short: a workshop is whatever it wants to be, and different ones serve different purposes in the academic ecosystem.

In CS subfields related to HCI and related topics of communication between users and software, a workshop is almost the same as a conference, that is, there are speakers who give talks about their papers. However, the following differences can be observed:
Organisational:

A workshop lasts just one or half a day.
A workshop is "embedded" into a conference; it doesn't take place on its own, but it takes place at the day before or after the main conference. Sometimes, conference registration includes workshop registration.
The audience tends to be much smaller. This is partially because often, several workshops are scheduled at the same time, and partially, because not all conference guests attend any workshops (especially when the workshop needs to be registered and paid for separately). In any case, it is not untypical for smaller workshops to have just a handful of attendees, each of which will present something.

Contents:

There is less of an expectation of presenting fully finished work. Work in progress, or results based on a preliminary study, are usually accepted, if not explicitly invited.
Likewise, remarks about future work can be a bit more central than in normal talks, as the workshop may prove as an opportunity to find collaborators who would like to help tackle the suggestions for future work.
While conference sessions typically feature an opportunity for questions and answers on every single paper right after each talk, workshops sometimes schedule an additional (sometimes considerable in duration) wrap-up discussion that is supposed to provide some time for discussing everything that was presented during the workshop, identifying common issues and chances, and possibly developing ideas for further work together.

Sometimes, a workshop is just a conference, but the organizers decided to call it a workshop instead for one reason or another.
So while a lot of people will have some idea of what the difference should be, in practice the difference can be non-existent, so one will need to look at the details of each individual conference or workshop to decide which will be of interest.
(Note that my entire experience is from mathematics, so it might be different in other fields).

It is also my experiences from genetics that workshops and conferences can be indistinguishable. But I will add that workshops (might be) are more directed on concrete tools/methods at hand (albeit no practical training is done), while conferences stretches a bit further into the future with more focus on results and findings.

I generally agree, but I would add that the term "workshop" suggests an opportunity for learning around a specific theme.  For instance, a general AMS meetings with sessions on many different topics is rightly not called a workshop (though, as I recall, there may be specialized workshops as part of the Joint Math Meetings--at the least there are mini-courses).

@Kimball Right, but that is called a meeting rather than a conference. I have attended events that were practically identical apart from the speakers, but one was called a conference and the other a workshop.

Good point, the word "conference" is not officially in the title, though people do still use the word "conference" to refer to it sometimes, whereas no one would call it a workshop.  When I wrote that, I was trying to think of large conferences that could not be called workshops, and the Joint Meetings was the first thing that came to mind.

A workshop is designed to teach something or develop a specific skill while an academic conference is about presenting original research and getting feedback from peers. A workshop doesn't necessarily have to present original research; it is directed more towards teaching and learning in an interactive environment. Active participation from attendees is encouraged in a workshop, and small activities are often conducted to keep the participants engaged.

Could you specify your field? Because as can be seen from other answers, this is not a universal thing.

My field is Scholarly Communications.

A conference literally means "bring together" so it's just a big meeting of people. In professional life, a conference usually means going to presentations and meeting colleagues. Academic conferences usually mean that you write a paper and receive feedback to make it more publishable.
A workshop can be a conference (because it also "brings together") but as the name implies, it is about using a space as a place to build something hands-on. In the academic case, this typically means new research skills, improving papers, building knowledge and inevitably defending a research position because academics like to fight over ideas and theories. The upshot is that because you are building rather than presenting, it is quite common to see papers in very draft mode or even just some data looking for ideas on analysis. You are meant to help people learn by working collaboratively.
Other "conferences" include:

A Symposium is based on Greek drinking parties, but usually means a number of people try to answer a common question (drinking comes later). It is popular in the humanities.
Colloquium/Seminar is mostly an opportunity to discuss a topic.
A panel is a series of speeches, often moderated by a master of ceremonies.
A "camp" uses Open Space technology to moderate informal sessions about just about anything under a common theme.
A "hackathon" in the academic world usually involves trying to come up with a research question and a way to answer it in a short period of time.
A roundtable involves different experts all having equal time to discuss a particular topic.

Other ideas and definitions about types of conferences are available online as well.
Good luck!

Most workshops are there to teach you a skill, or set of skills. While a conference is mostly about passively listening to talks and reading posters, in a workshop you are actively engaged in doing something.
This can be learning a new piece of software, learning a mathematical method, how to use a specific machinery or an instrument, etc. There are also going to be talks about the subject: theory, applications and possible more.
Not all workshops are like that - I've been in a one day "workshop" where all we did was sit in a lecture hall listening to people talk about a common topic. In an ideal workshop you would hopefully be actively doing something.
Also, in conferences you are usually able (and expected) to present something, be it a talk or a poster. In workshop this is rarely the case, and the agenda is predetermined.

Could you clarify "in workshops (...) the agenda is predetermined", please? While it is true that many attendees of conferences (sometimes even most?) have at least one work to present, in my field, conference agendas are very much predetermined and everyone who presents something can find the exact time and location of the session they present in several weeks in advance.

A Workshop is as the name suggests a shop where we work to produce some products. Here the participants are workers, the methodology used like presentation of papers, question answer sessions, group discussions, debates, group and individual problem solving sessions are the tools/machinery in a workshop. The theme proposed by the organisers is the raw-material and the recommendations/models and answers arrived at is the finished product.
Col SK Mahapatra

A lot of workshops that I've participated in don't really have any intended products...


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How to add long lists in thesis
We performed some bioinformatic work during thesis. Output of these analysis are more than 10 tables with 2000 rows each. We cannot add these in the printed version of the thesis, so we thought about:

link to the online version, since paper containing this data was published.
give a CD-ROM with the thesis, but for me this physical format is obsolete.

Maybe you have a better alternative or agree with the first one like me.

For online version, you may want to drop it into a well-known data repository or even the arXiv. (Please don't just put the online version on your group website, unless you intend to permanently maintain a stable URL and provide archival storage of the information.)

@Willie Wong, do you think giving the link to the journal where paper was published is not adequate? I mean direct link to data.

Can you please clarify: 1) What sort of thesis is this; in particular, is it a published thesis? 2) Who is we?

It is not clear to me what you meant by "Paper containing this data was published". Do you mean that the data is included in a (long) paper published somewhere? Do you mean that the data is included as online supplementary information for a paper somewhere? Or do you mean simply that a paper based on that data is published somewhere? In the first two cases then yes, you can just link to the published version. But in case two depending how your journal handles supplementary information it may still be a good idea to publish the data elsewhere in addition.

@Willie Wong, the data was included as online supplementary information for a paper.

@Wrzlprmft, thesis is organized by chapters, but chapter content was published as papers, added at the end of the thesis as annexes. Since papers have the link to supplementary data (the long tables), I think I will rely on these links indicating it at the corresponding chapter.

Welcome to the internet! There are tons of places when you can share data. You can use pastebin to paste it as text, or github, or even a public link to your dropbox account!

If you have published your data/papers already in a journal, be a bit careful with who actually holds the rights to these. Most journals allow you to reuse things for your thesis, but for some you have to request this. They might be a bit more picky if you decide to make your data publicly available online though - so just linking to your own paper is probably the safer alternative.

Output of these analysis are more than 10 tables with 2000 rows each. We cannot add these in the printed version of the thesis ...

Even if you could (say for instance you hate trees and you don't pay for your thesis), do you think anybody would want to have that kind of data in physical format?
Both alternatives are valid, but as you said optical media is becoming more and more obsolete. If you really want to provide the data in a physical form, you can distribute it as a usb-stick. As the capacity of sticks increase, smaller drives become dirt cheap. You should be able to get 1GB, 2GB or even 4GB for relatively small price in hundreds.
The other option, online availability, is the better alternative in general. However the maintenance of data is important as others have mentioned. Both in terms of availability and proper cataloging try to use well known and established repositories.
What I don't understand however, is why you feel the need to "republish" findings, if you have already deposited this data together with a prior publication. Just refer to the data as "Table/Supplementary Info X from Paper Y"

It's also possible that physical media could be a requirement of the university.

I will try online availability option, physical media storages are obsolete, even USB sticks.

If you want it to fit well in the printed copies, you can buy SD cards :-)

While publishing data sets on arXiv might be a decent option, I suggest you to consider posting your research results and artifacts to figshare or Zenodo. Both services allow artifacts to be not only citable, but also discoverable (via DOI assignment). Version control is supported as well, but the advantage of Zenodo in this regard in comparison with figshare is Git and GitHub integration.

It sounds like there is already a DOI available, since the asker has said that they have published a paper with these data. Is it necessary to upload somewhere else too? Is figshare or Zenodo more likely to stick around than the journal?

@MJeffryes: The beauty of the repositories that I recommended is that both allow to create citable artifacts, which, in this case, would refer to citable data sets (with separate DOIs). This is a very popular trend today in the light of overall bigger trend of wider promotion and use of the reproducible research paradigm. As for the longevity, I am pretty confident in both services, especially Zenodo. IMHO it will stick around, at least, as long as a typical journal, if not longer, since it is EU-funded and backed by more than solid CERN IT infrastructure.

It sounds like Zenodo is the perfect solution for this problem. I will certainly bookmark it for possible future use...

@Floris: You are welcome. I am glad to be able to help.


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Must all results be commented on in the discussion section of a research paper?
I did a survey on the demand for complementary medicine among hospital patients. We used a questionnaire comprising 38 items and consequentially I have a lot of information.
I am currently writing a research paper and I was wondering whether all results reported in the result section ought to be commented on in the discussion section? I reported various findings I deemed important, but in the discussion part, I only concentrated on the interpretation and analysis of the main ones since it would be too much otherwise. I did an exploratory survey without any specific hypothesis a priori. Is it okay to report many results and then focus only on the essential ones in the discussion section, or is this being frowned upon?

I took the liberty to remove your second question as it is sufficiently distinct from your first one and should be asked separately. However, before you do so, please look into the target journal’s guidelines.

Not only is that OK, that's really what you should be doing. Nobody else is going to spend a lot of time going over your data to find interesting conclusions – that's your job. Busy researchers who are related but not directly in your field are likely to only read your abstract, introduction, and discussion.
Your discussion tells us what was interesting and why. If someone really wants to get the whole story then they'll go look at your results section to see for themselves.


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Acknowledgment as technician. Do I list them in the CV? How?
I’m a technician that has done some work in a research group, and I get some acknowledgments in the papers. A fellow technician in the university has told me that for us, technicians, they are important for our CV, as we don’t get publications (we usually just assist, so getting in a publication is really weird).
Should I put my acknowledgments in my CV? If so, how should I put them? I tried to put them with the name of the paper and the authors, but maybe my future employer won’t understand that part if he is not in academia (but e.g., in a company).

Perhaps you could look at the CV of the person who suggested this to you.

Employers outside academia usually aren't interested in publications but rather in your abilities and any deliverables you can associate those abilities with.
How specifically you highlight those abilities completely depends on the job you are applying for. For example, if you were applying for a position where you would be doing LC/MS, you could write in your resume that you "processed LC/MS samples in support of three projects leading to publishable papers."
If you were applying for an academic job, I'd be more likely to suggest including the papers your were acknowledged in, along with a note about what you were acknowledged for.


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Clarifying email instructions with advisor
I receive sometimes one line instructions from my PhD supervisor on work I need to do and send. Not always clear though.
He sometimes forgets what he had discussed in our last discussion, or does not explain the rationale. Under such circumstances, how do I communicate with him? Redoing done work is I believe a waste of time and energy.

Ask for clarification or explain that you already did something. Keep it short and friendly, those people can be busy with many other things (and thus, forget what they have discussed with you).

Expanding the answer of Magicsowon,
If you receive one-line email instructions and they are clear to follow: follow them.
If you receive one-line email instructions and they are not clear: respond with a request to schedule a meeting. Suggest your supervisor to choose from several timeslots when you will be able to make it. Include tentative times and dates into the email subject line.
In the face-to-face meeting: remind him how the last meeting ended. If you had completed any of his tasks, deliver the results. If you have any clarification questions, ask them until you are in the clear. It might be a good idea to make notes during the discussion and send them to your supervisor by email later, so that you'd be on the same page.


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Can you apply for a faculty position via a recruiting agency?
I came across some job advertisements for faculty positions that stated

Strictly No Agencies

This implies that some agencies apply on behalf of the applicants. Is it common? Is it possible at all? I mean do open positions without the above statement accept applications sent by agencies rather than the applicant?
I know that the recruitment for senior industry positions is outsourced and handled by agencies, but this should be a different case.

Shouldn't the applicant write a cover letter explaining how his/her experiences/skills fit the job description?

It's more likely that universities without the above statement simply haven't been harassed by unsolicited agencies enough to post such a statement.

An anecdotal point: for the first time in 50 years, I did have an "agency" contact me asking whether I'd be interested in having them promote me for a dept chair position (in math, in the U.S., at a reasonable place). I'd not been approached similarly, or heard of anyone else ... until just now.

I have never, ever, encountered a faculty search - or indeed a postdoc search - handled by an agency.
Nor have I ever been contacted by an agency looking to handle recruitments as a potential candidate, despite getting ads on sites like LinkedIn that suggest I've been accurately categorized as faculty.
In the vast universe of possibilities, I'm sure there are exceptions, but my best guess is that this is boiler-plate language that goes in all job ads from that institution.

"Nor have I ever been contacted by an agency looking to handle recruitments as a potential candidate" - and until academic institutions start paying fees to agencies, you never will be. Recruiters don't do what they do for the benefit of either applicants or the organizations they apply do. The only reason they do it is to get richer.

@alephzero The “why” (while correct) is less relevant than that it’s never happened

@Fomite It's hard (essentially impossible) to prove a negative in this case.  There isn't really evidence that it's "never happened".  On the other hand, providing a reason why it shouldn't logically happen is far more relevant and less anecdotal.

Actually, I have heard that some Universities use headhunter agency for new chair/full professor positions.

@dsfgsho I've seen them used for very high level positions like university president, but that seemed sufficiently edge-casey that I went with probably boiler plate.

This implies that some agencies apply on behalf of the applicants.

Not necessarily.
Another possibility is that agencies make unsolicited offers to recruit a candidate on the institution’s behalf.
While I don’t think that universities are likely to make use of such a service, I can expect that such offers can be annoying and even rejecting them wastes a considerable amount of time.
Also, the recruiting process is not limited to applications.
There may be agencies who make enquiries because they think that the job may be a good fit for a client – though it clearly isn’t and the client would never apply.
I am regularly contacted by recruiting agencies (and even companies) who could have seen with a short glance at my CV that I do not match their job offer at all.
In some cases, this process was at least semi-automatised as I received the same offer twice via different channels.
It thus wouldn’t surprise me at all if such agencies blindly offer their services to anybody posting a job ad (matching some automatisable criteria) on certain sites.
Of course, it is debatable if agencies that do not even notice that a job offer is academic will notice the warning in question, but adding the warning in question to a university’s general boilerplate costs almost nothing.

[…] do open positions without the above statement accept applications sent by agencies rather than the applicant?

I strongly doubt this; they just haven’t annoyed by recruiters to the extent that they created this boilerplate warning.
Note that in my (admittedly limited) experience, the existence of such a warning depends on the country.
I have never seen such a warning for positions in Germany, but almost every job ad from the Netherlands and Belgium had one.
This may be due to different attitudes towards and of said agencies in those countries.

One possible advantage to consider: having that boilerplate allows you to blacklist agency emails outright at a much lower cost to the institutional conscience. And if they happen to complain, you just point to the boilerplate and you're mostly done. Kinda like when this happened - adding rules not so you'll use them (which you're already doing) but to simplify the handling of complaints against them.

In private industry, when a company wants to recruit people it will often hire a recruiting agency.  They will come to an agreement that if a recruiting agency can successfully place a candidate and the candidate stays for a minimal period (e.g., 6 months) then company will pay the recruiting agency a specified percentage of the candidate's salary.
When everything is on the up and up, both parties (the company and the recruiter) will be in full awareness and agreement.  They may choose to formalize this agreement by signing a contract.  The company could save money by "rejecting" a candidate and secretly encouraging him/her to reapply outside the recruiting agency, but this would be unethical and legally actionable.
Obviously no company wants to be in the position of having to pay out money to a recruiting agency that it never wanted to work with in the first place.  Ideally if no agreement is reached, then the recruiting agency should not be owed any fee.
However, proactive, clear messaging can solve problems before they even happen.  When we say "Strictly No Agencies" we mean we are not going to pay you for your unsolicited services.

This hardly addresses the question, if at all. Moreover, I find it unlikely that any professional recruiting agencies work without contract.

@Wrzlprmft how much does it cost the university to add the boilerplate language to a posting? almost nothing.  It makes sense to pay $0.00 to solve an unlikely problem.

Sure, but being tricked into paying money is not the problem here.

I think you are saying the real problem is being flooded with a large number of inappropriate applications.  The kind of recruitment agencies that would overlook "Strictly No Agencies" are going to produce applications that are easily and quickly identifiable as trash.


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Former PhD supervisor faked results and submitted a corrigendum two years after publication
During my PhD studies, I published a journal article (one of total four) in a prestigious journal of my field. I gave my codes to my PhD supervisor, but he messed up things in the lab and lost it (I also didn’t care and lost, for I am pursuing different directions).
Two years after publication, my PhD advisor wanted to commercialize my PhD work and wanted me to develop the codes again without willing to credit me for my efforts. I found his emails harassing, malicious and blackmailing and stopped responding him by directing his emails to spam folder.
Out of desperation, he himself developed some codes and submitted a corrigendum in which he clearly tried to push an agenda to suit his commercialization efforts (I know what I am talking, believe me on this). This included falsifying earlier findings just because he didn’t understand my work and cannot implement it and thus, presented an alternate algorithm which clearly is inferior. From my experience with that algorithm, I know from his description of implementation in the corrigendum that the results he presented are clearly made-up.
My PhD advisor has basically faked results in a corrigendum to suit his commercialization efforts.
What are my options ?

Can I convey it to the journal ? (I have already conveyed to the journal that this corrigendum is submitted without my approval.)
Can I offer my ex advisor to re-implement but giving me the due credit?
What should I do?

2: If things are as you are describing them, then this is a lost cause; if your advisor is willing to lie about you for financial gain, then an email won't help. Unless you are sending it to establish a paper trail showing that you've tried. I don't know what to suggest, but I'd definitely let the journal know in your place. Keep to the facts, however ("From my experience with that algorithm, I know from his description of implementation in the corrigendum that the results he presented are clearly made-up" is a bit too much on the guess side; stick to what you definitely know).

I worked in Bayesian machine learning and what my ex advisor has described in the corrigendum is computationally impossible unless he has access to an imaginary super computer with implementation in the some magical programming language.

Are you willing to help him develop the codes in principle? If so, make it unambiguously clear that this will only happen if you get full credit. If not, just make your position clear to the journal and stick to facts that are hard and proven; no speculations, even if you are sure. Be aware that, if you help them, and if your impression of them is correct, they may still attempt to cheat you out of credit and/or profit, so you may want to take suitable precautions to preempt that.

I made an offer to my ex Prof. about developing codes again for him in return for 50% credit. I intended to provide just exe files until legally protected. From his response, however, I imply that he is not willing to admit that he want to commercialize despite he declared such intentions while I was a student in his lab.

How do you actually know that he submitted a corrigendum?  Did he tell you, did the journal send you the corrigendum to review, or was the corrigendum already published?

@Roland Can you please convert your comment into an answer?

does your university have a research integrity office?

If you have incontrovertible, hard evidence that the adviser is falsifying data for personal gain, and can demonstrate as such beyond any reasonable doubt, you may have an ethical obligation "to science" to pursue this.
Outside of this, it is probably best to walk away. You already stated that you 'don't care' and even sent his emails to spam. Do you even want to be associated with this work (assuming he wants to re-do things and give you credit)? It sounds like the work would be significant and the rewards fairly minimal. Besides, based on your description, if he 'cannot implement' this commercialization attempt, there's little to gain.


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In my thesis, can I use results for which a collaborator wrote most of the simulation code, or do I have to independently replicate the simulations?
In the course of my PhD I have written a few papers that I am planning on incorporating into my dissertation. I was first author on these papers and legitimately wrote and developed the high majority of the papers (as in, I wasn't just gifted "first author" status). In the course of our papers, my co-authors and I used some computer simulations to verify our theoretical results.
While I developed all of the theory for the paper independently, another graduate student did some of the grunt work writing the code for one of the simulations. This was done mainly just to expedite the submission of our paper, and not because I had no idea what was going on with the simulations. I actually helped develop the intricacies of the simulation; it just was not my hands on the keyboard coding it. Can I just cite our own paper in my dissertation and use its results as if they are my own, or do I need to independently replicate the results that my fellow grad student found in order to use them in my dissertation?
The underlying question here comes down to how much I can "self-cite" as my own a part of a paper that I was the main author for, but did not explicitly produce? I am aware that citing a paper I wrote is fine. I am even okay copying wording directly for certain potions of the dissertation (with a note explaining the replication). However it is unclear if I can use results that someone else found as part of my dissertation. His results give application for the theoretical framework that I am establishing for my dissertation.

Possible duplicate of Self-Plagiarism in PhD thesis  - note, although this question might seem to be about only SELF citing, it is explicitly in the context of publications with multiple authors and the answers address this. TL;DR: there is no problem with citing your own publications in your thesis.

If those results are published, cite the publication. If those results are unpublished, you can cite the contribution of the other student either where you present the results ("Otherguy and Vladhagen, unpublished, 2015") or in an acknowledgment (I would favor the latter). Your advisor should be able to answer questions like this as you write your dissertation as well.
Note that in academic work, "writing code" is not held to the same level as intellectual input: it's good that you want you make sure your colleague gets appropriate credit, but it just isn't the same as developing ideas. The same would go for other "grunt work" in a lab: culturing the cells, washing the dishes, running the PCR. That type of credit goes in the "acknowledgments" section, or with some added intellectual work and help drafting the manuscript, they get a middle authorship. Science is a collaborative process, and no one expects your work in your dissertation to be yours and yours alone without anyone's help.
If you want to distribute the code itself, you would want to have permission of the person writing the code.

@rjzii: I'd say it depends on the level of programming. Writing scripts to automate simulations? Definitely on the level of culturing cells, washing dishes, etc. Writing a new kernel/filesystem/framework? Definitely not on the level of culturing cells, washing dishes, etc.

@rjzii: Fair point!

@rjzii I feel like the OP suggested the implementation of this simulation was fairly straightforward and specifically referred to "grunt work," and the OP had input in designing the program. To me, that's sort of "hired programmer" work, vs. scientific work. If the programmer was developing algorithms, etc, that is clearly intellectual work; doesn't change whether OP can use it in the dissertation with due credit, though. Also I'd say that although cell culture isn't in my line of work, for certain cells I know it takes a lot of experience and technique - still an acknowledgment. :)

If you can write a research thesis, with a narrative taking you from start to end, which you know to be your own narrative - a progression of ideas, findings and conclusions which reflects your own progression over the course of your PhD - then the fact the a part of the work was done jointly with others should not be a problem (neither ethically and getting-the-title-wise).
But of course - always cite and give credit where relevant.

You can add and appreciate his work in acknowledgment section. Moreover if you have published an article based on his simulation and he is a co-author you can also cite that article in your thesis.


text:
Can I hire someone to write code for my dissertation (if I've designed the algorithm)?
Barring any extremely unfortunate disaster, I am five weeks away from a final defense and a Ph.D.
At this point, we are in the re-write stage ("of my unforgivably horrible and weak thesis") but it is expected to work and be ready for my final defense in a month.
Prior to the thesis, my advisor REALLY wants me to program the algorithm I give as part of my dissertation. Though I have the algorithm pseudocoded, I have no idea anymore about basic commands, data structures, counters, declaring local and global variables, and just general grammar and structure for what he REALLY wants me to program on (though I don't HAVE to): Mathematica.
Worse, every time I try to get a dry, discrete checklist of what he wants for the program, it varies, often leading him to talk about ill about computer scientists and lament about how traditional languages just don't do the job PASCAL used to do (dead serious). Hence, the last piece of progress required of me by his say so - a piece not really contributing to my original work and that could represent time better spent revising my writing and preparing for my final defense instead of learning how to print "LEOOH WHIORLD" on MATHEMATICA - is setting up, after two years of back-cracking dissertation work, to be what ultimately "does me in."
When (or even if) I get standards for this program he wants to see, would it be unethical of me to hire a tutor to help me code the program, or even hire a programmer to help me write the program, even given that I pseudocode the program myself? Skipping the hours and hours of manual searching to learn how to read in files (and files with gigantic matrices at that) and how to look up code corresponding to pseudocode, keep up with counters etc. really seems like a good investment for me, but my moral bells are a ringing on this one, even if I pseudocode the project myself.

I've cut down on a lot of the backstory to focus on the actual ethical question. Please feel free to undo some or all of the edits if you think I've changed your question too much!

What does your advisor say regarding this question? He is probably the only one that can answer this question conclusively.

tonysdg - edit all you like to make the question more helpful!
mdiener - knowing him as I do, he'll either get angry and assume I'll get help even if he says no, or he'll shrug his shoulders and say as long as it is yours, just don't do something dumb and say someone else did the whole thing or that you plagiarized another person's code (which he knows I would not do)

I think it is not unusual to have someone else implement an algorithm that you developed. However, your advisor needs to know and consent to this.

I wonder what is your major and what is the focus of your thesis. It greatly influences if coding yourself is central to your job or not. Also, i am curious what do you do with a pseudocode/algorithms if it is not even implemented/ tested.

I view a PhD as a bit like an apprenticeship to be a researcher, so it may be that in engaging someone to do the programming for you you are not demonstrating that you have acquired a necessary skill.  It may be this is like an apprentice cabinet maker getting someone to do their dovetail joints for them, or perhaps getting someone to do the french polishing.  Whether this is O.K. depends on the nature of the subject.  Of course this assumes that you explicitly acknowledge in the thesis that someone else did the programming, otherwise it would be plagiarism.

Greg, my area is (pure) math. I work full-time as a math/stat professor at a medical college, and I do not anticipate ever having a coding job in the future. To be open about the background here, my advisor is probably asking me to code because I have a background in Computer Science, but have not coded in a decade (except in Fortran, which I can only run where I'm getting my degree, a 100+-minute round trip). Yesterday, my advisor put his foot down and explicitly instructed me to not code until I had proven the algorithm first, under fears that I would give up if my program had errors!

Dikran, yes, I would put proper acknowledgements toward anyone who would implement (or even simply debug!) any code I write. The official explanation is that my dissertation lacks enough content in my advisor's opinion otherwise, even given the originality of my content; extending the content would take much longer in his opinion (probably correct). The algorithm I have is actually one he thought up (bit didn't prove), with some modifications of my own; he has tried to implement it for years on Mathematica but keeps coming up with errors he doesn't know how to fix.

Really you should hire this person to teach you Mathematica rather than code your algorithm for you.
You should code and run this algorithm yourself on whatever data (or input) you have using whatever platform you have.  It shouldn't have to be Mathematica, why not MATLAB or even C or C++?
If you can write pseudocode, you can write real code.

I have previous experience with Fortran, C, and Pascal (which should give away my age). I recently gained clearance to program it in Matlab, since Matlab is kind of the path to a shortest implementation, but I do not know crucial things even after spending three hours in its tutorials today (such as how to do all of the matrix operations I need in modular arithmetic).  My direction may be down the line you suggest, where I could pay someone to teach me the more intricate commands I don't know already and cannot Google, and to debug.

write your alg in C, then.  run it on a file of data (that you would use fopen() and fread() to get) and show your results.

actually, probably you should do it in MATLAB.  since that is the easiest to look at intermediate data with their various plot() functions.

"If you can write pseudocode, you can write real code." if you have infinite available time to learn all the technicalities of the real code (I am joking ... and I am half serious).

@EarlGrey , you need to learn how to do the basic arithmetic with numbers, manipulations with text, to do repetitions (loops), call functions from a library, learn to open, read from, write to, and close files.

Really you should hire this person to teach you Mathematica rather than code your algorithm for you. Why: Outsourcing is surely the solution?

@user2768 There is nothing wrong with either a graduate student or a scholar or even a faculty member to receive specialized instruction to learn the programming language of a tool that they need to use to process data or implement models in their research.

@robertbristow-johnson Sure, there's nothing wrong, equally, it may be utterly inefficient, that's why we delegate. What's right depends on circumstance. Personally, circumstances permitting, I'd outsource everything someone else can do better (assuming a tolerable overhead).

I don't see an issue with hiring someone or getting a peer to contribute to the software as long as they are acknowledged accordingly and included in any future publications on it. Research is often team effort.  However, your concern seems to be saving time during the final stages of your thesis. Sorry but I don't think the process of recruiting someone qualified  for the project and explaining your algorithm to them will achieve that, even if your advisor agrees to it.
The most qualified person for the job appears to be you and it would benefit your career to take responsibility in releasing the algorithm. You don't need to do this during your PhD. If it really doesn't add to the original contribution of knowledge perhaps leave it until after the thesis is completed. It is common practice at our institution to prepare publications based on thesis work after the thesis has been competed including accompanying data and software releases. I'd try pitching the thesis completion as a top priority to your advisor with the added offer to complete the software and publications afterwards. This should be easier to convince them to do rather than hiring someone else short term.

I agree! Oddly, I have already attempted to pitch the importance of completing my thesis to my advisor, even promising him that I would write and attempt to release a paper with the code after my degree was complete, and he nonetheless said that a correctly working program of my algorithm was going to be necessary for me to earn a "pass" at my final oral exam, no matter how solid the rest of my content was. I believe this is because of some very large systems he has been trying to find minimal support solutions for, and he's retired and headed out the door when I'm done.

Well thankfully in most systems, your advisor does not decide whether you pass the PhD. Your examiners do and you can make the case to them that your contribution as it' stands is significant and original, especially if they are otherwise satisfied with your thesis. However, your advisor does have more experience with the process than you do and they can make recommendations so take their advice seriously. Nevertheless, hiring someone else to do it isn't an ideal solution if they see it as necessary to demonstrate your thesis and submitting it to fulfil your degree. Best of luck to you.

Having completed a short term project using Mathematica, it shouldn't take that long to get a handle on it. Especially if you've used other programming languages. Check out the Mathematica SE site!

Tom, at my institution, what would happen if I refuse to code is that my advisor will email my committee and tell them that I am not ready for my final orals, and the exam will therefore be cancelled. It is an unfortunate common complaint that advisors are leaned on too heavily at my institution, with little comparative role from other committee members.
Attempting Mathematica has been a nightmare for me - it seems more like a command line system than a programmer's system. Browsing online seems to reveal that programming would be much different than the languages I've used before.

That's rather unfortunate to hear, particularly considering that everything else sounds to be going well if you've scheduled your oral exam so soon. If programming the algorithm is really necessary to demonstrate your original contribute (even if it is really more of a research output), perhaps it may be better to do it in a language you are more comfortable with (e.g., Python)? You haven't given much detail on what the actual algorithm does or what your field usually uses but learning Mathematica this late in the thesis should only be needed if it is indeed the best tool for the job.

@TomKelly My (limited) experience is that Mathematica's complexity scales superlinearly. When a project gets longer than a few pages of interdependent code, one really regrets using the language, and debugging becomes very tricky. Maybe a better/more experienced Mathematica programmer would have a different opinion, but we're not speaking about experienced Mathematica programmers here.


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What should a graduate student be doing in the summer?
What should a grad student do during summer?

@lafemmecosmique I'd remove the "maybe" from the last sentence ;-) Anyway, to the OP, you should at least specify the country and what are your goals. For the moment, voted to close as too broad.

I think a country tag should be added to this question, or alternatively a brief sentence explaining the (presumed) situation that there is no "scheduled programme" during summer for the OP. Having spent some time on this page, I am now aware that such seems to be the case in some places, but without that knowledge, my straightforward (and, as the OP is probably subject to a different university system, rather useless to them) answer would have been: "Why? Is there anything different about summer compared to the other seasons?"

Since others have contributed answers, it is not fair to delete the question at this point (that would also delete the answers!). Instead, you should try to improve it - e.g. by adding the country you are asking about, and other improvements as suggested by the comments above.

Why were (on-topic) comments deleted from this question?

Summer While You Are Enrolled
You should do the same thing you do the rest of the year, but with more focus on research.
To elaborate:
Graduate studies are not usually about classes. You will take some classes, to get a breadth of knowledge in your field, and to get up to speed on your specific area of research. But most of graduate studies is reading, creating, and evaluating research. You will read papers, and work on research that you can write papers about.
Summer ends up being an ideal time to do these things, because you're not usually taking or TAing classes, and your supervisor is not usually teaching, so you both have more time to dedicate to research. Particularly if you're looking to have a career in Academia, then having published papers are very important. But even if you're looking to go into industry, the projects you work on will probably be more important to your career than the classes you take.
(This doesn't always apply to Course-based Masters or Professional degrees, like Speech Pathology, Library Science, Medicine, etc.)
Summer Before You Start
Reading your question, I realize this may be what you're asking. If you're starting in September, what should you do leading up to then?
I have a few main suggestions:

Catch up on your personal life. Whether this means taking a vacation, working extra to make some more money, or just relaxing at home, spend some time on the things that you might not have as much time to do during your studies.
In particular, try to get your mental health in order. Graduate studies are usually pretty stressful, and between having to independently motivate yourself, facing deadlines, and reading the work of others, it is very common for graduate students to face anxiety, depresssion, stress, and the imposter syndrome. So if you can get your stress levels to a baseline before you start your studies, it will make it easier to handle the elevated difficulty that comes with graduate studies.

Get a head-start in related skills. The summer before your studies is a great time to teach yourself LaTeX (if you're in a field that uses it), or wor processing, or spreadsheets, or whatever is common in your area. Learn how to use a citation manager like Mendeley or Zotero. Get acquainted with Google Calendar or another schedule managing tool

Get started on your reading. One of the hardest things about graduate studies is that you will spend a lot of time with a lot of very smart people who seem to know a lot. For the most part, they know a lot because they have read lots of papers. So, if you can familiarize your self with the actual research that is going on in your area, the things that you don't learn from textbooks and undergraduate classes. You're not going to be able to do too much just in the summer, but any little bit you do will help the start of your studies be less overwhelming.

I started grad school right out of undergrad -- literally 3 weeks after graduating with my B.S. My current advisor had offered me a summer GRA position and a chance to get a head start. Looking back (2 years later), I would caution new grad students on doing that -- you won't have another break for a while, so the suggestion to "Catch up on your personal life" is an excellent one IMO. +1

You do not mention if you are a doctoral student or master-level student.
Typically, summers should be used to get ahead in your program of study and/or career. Especially if you are not engaged in supported research under an advisor. So, reading papers that will advance your thesis/dissertation and/or writing papers for publication are common summer activities. Planning summer work also helps prepare you for a career in academia, where many contracts are 9-10 months during the year.

It really depends. Some take classes, some take a break, some travel, some continue on their research.
For me, personally, I've spent last summer taking courses to fulfill some degree requirements and I'm doing the same this summer.
Every person is different. Some graduate students are different. There is nothing that you should be doing, but maybe depending on where you are in your studies, there are few things you should prepare. Getting ready for your dissertation? Do some research. Need a break? Take up a hobby or maybe travel a little.
It may be best to talk to your advisor.


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Can you ask for help while doing a PhD thesis?
If you are doing a PhD thesis in science, can you ask for help? For example, paying someone to solve some hard equations or use numerical method to solve a problem.
Or if you ask for someone for an idea, do you need to cite them in your references ?

the journey is the reward ;-)

You don't need to pay someone.  There are many StackExchange math forums you can ask.  You can give credit for an idea in the Acknowledgment section of a paper.

Paying someone is not asking for help, it’s hiring help.  The circumstance you describe is indeed better described as seeking a collaborator, from which you might learn how to solve the problem.

Your advisor is the first source of help. A good one will provide it, but sometimes by sending you off to read something. For many students (myself included) the idea for a research topic comes from the advisor. Regular meetings with them are also advised and you should mention where you are stuck when it happens. You might get an  answer. You might get a hint. You might get sent to another source. All are helpful.
Whether advisors are co-authors or not (my preference is not) is field dependent. In math it seems pretty rare, for example, and in the past was mostly non-existent.
As for paying people to do some technical things, that may be allowed or not, but the advisor is the one to ask in your particular case. But other kinds of consultations are normally allowed and mostly don't rise to the level of co-authorship. It is possible, of course, but that might also put the degree itself in jeopardy when the rules are strict. Some fields are funny that way. A brief conversation in math can provide the crux of the answer to the key problem of a "thesis".
I once heard the joke (I hope) that an advisor, speaking to a student, said "I don't mind writing your dissertation, but I'll be damned if I'll explain it to you when I'm done."

the problem is what if your advisor is an asshole :D and he does not want to solve anything or help you or if the topic is too hard and you need some math help

I'd advise against it, strongly. In the UK, universities usually align their degrees with the quality assurance agency (qaa), similar institutions exist elsewhere (I would hope anyways...). They set out what a student must demonstrate upon completion in order to receive the degree. For a phd thesis, it boils down to 2 things: does the student's work merit publication and can the student discuss the wider research context of their field of expertise with experts in the field. (you can read the one page summary here: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.qaa.ac.uk/docs/qaa/quality-code/qualifications-frameworks.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiFkvyDivT4AhWDiFwKHUjED3kQFnoECBUQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0bJwZ8CalHxQMHlnkIKoMT ). Both these qualities are aimed at making you an independent researcher and independence comes with experience. If you have a particularly challenging problem, you should solve it yourself, there is a reason why phd studies take that much longer than msc studies, for example. You are given plenty of time to fail and learn, this is how you gain expertise and ultimately transform into a independent researcher. I remember having to derive Equations I didn't understand at first in my PhD, in my thesis they were 30 pages long and it took me 6 month to understand and drive them. The implementation took another 6 month, but during that time I could really feel how I transformed from a student to a researcher.
You should also check your university's handbooks should you decide to pay for help. In our case this is a big issue and will automatically start an academic misconduct investigation. I had a student trying to do just that, in the end that student didn't finish their study and this was part of the reason we had to force a termination on the student. Its not something you want to go through, I really recommend to make tough problems your own, deal with them until you get sick of them, then you'll progress. This has been every phd journey that I have witnessed around me.

You usually sign a statement saying that you did everything by yourself.
However, a possibility can be to do a paper-based doctorate, where you might collaborate with someone that is able to the stuff you can't (and don't want to learn)

As it’s currently written, your answer is unclear. Please [edit] to add additional details that will help others understand how this addresses the question asked. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center.


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Meaning of undergraduate, graduate or post-graduate in US
Trying to figure out the difference between these. I've lost completely as different source/answers interpret it differently. Does anyone have clear understanding about what does undergraduate/graduate/post-graduate student mean in USA?
I've seen this nice timeline in other question however answers are still controversial.
As well, trying to figure out who the hell am I - I have a Bachelor in Computer Science, Master in Computer Science and another Master in Business Information Systems. Is that graduate or post-graduate? Also, I'm not a student anymore.

Might be useful to mention where you earned these degrees but generally in the US "Bachelors" = undergraduate and "Masters" = graduate.  "Post-graduate" is kind of an umbrella term that might mean Masters/PhD but also might mean professional certification or maybe even something like continuing education.

Part of the confusion may be that these adjectives are used in (at least) two different contexts: to describe degrees and to describe students.

An undergraduate degree generally means a bachelor's degree (B.S., B.A., etc): a degree requiring about four years of university-level study beyond high school.
A graduate degree or post-graduate degree is any higher degree that has a bachelor's degree as a prerequisite, such as a masters or doctoral degree (M.S., M.A., M.F.A., M.B.A,. Ph.D., etc.)  Depending on context, this term may also include professional degrees (J.D. for law, M.D. for medicine, D.D.S. for dentistry, D.V.M. for veterinary medicine, etc).
An undergraduate student (or simply an undergraduate, or colloquially, an undergrad) is a student who does not yet have an undergraduate degree, but is studying to earn one.
A graduate student or post-graduate student (or colloquially, a grad student) is a student who already has an undergraduate degree and is studying to earn a graduate degree.

So in general, the adjectives graduate and post-graduate are synonyms.  This may seem contradictory (since you might expect post-graduate to refer to something after graduate) but that is how it's used.  I understand this as coming from the fact that a post-graduate degree is something that you work toward following your graduation (i.e. the moment when you earn your undergraduate degree).
My impression is that people within academia generally prefer the term graduate to post-graduate in both contexts; the word post-graduate is used more often by non-academics, to whom the word graduate is more likely to seem ambigiuous.
So you could say you have an undergraduate degree and two graduate degrees.  You could also describe your degrees as post-graduate degrees for further clarification, which would normally be needed only when speaking to someone not intimately familiar with academia.

@Roger: Hmm. I know  about   non-degree post-baccalaureate programs (informally, postbac) but I've never heard the word "post-graduate" attached to them.

I would simply add that because "graduate" (noun) can refer to any student who has achieved a bachelor degree, a "graduate degree" means a degree program open to graduates. Also, "graduate" (verb) can refer to the event of graduating (thus creating a graduate), so "post-graduate" degree means a degree program which follows (post) becoming a graduate.

"Post-graduate" is simply not a commonly used term in the US.  I wouldn't expect Americans to use it consistently.  It's not commonly used to describe a person who has graduated with any type of degree; I've found references to "post-graduation" on US/Canadian websites (just referring to the time after someone has graduated), but .  In Britain and much of the Commonwealth, "postgraduate" (with no hyphen)  refers to studying for a masters or doctoral degree; in the US, we would use "graduate" instead.  So, Americans would say you have a "graduate degree," Britons would say you have a "postgraduate" one.

I hear "post-graduate" fairly often from US non-academics. For example, I (who am in the US) recently received a summons for jury service; it included a questionnaire in which I was asked to describe my education as either "high school", "less than high school", "college" or "post grad". I agree that non-academics sometimes use it inconsistently.

I have to say that there is one difference between graduate and post-graduate -- while both mean "beyond Bachelor's degree", the first refers to level and the second to time.
If I were asked for a transcript of my graduate studies, I'd have to list several courses taken before receiving my B.S. because these were graduate classes -- designed for and taught to graduate students -- and I was permitted to add the classes by special permission.  But if asked about post-graduate studies, those wouldn't be included, since they did not chronologically follow my graduation.

A graduate is seen as someone who has successfully met the requisites for qualification on an undergraduate course and has been awarded their certificate of graduation.