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What are your thoughts on epigraphs in theses?
I am wondering if there is a general consensus as to the suitability of epigraphs in a thesis, either a single one at the start of the document, or an appropriate quote to begin every chapter.
For example, at the start of a technical chapter describing some code, I could write

Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. - Donald E. Knuth

I am lucky to have complete freedom over how I choose to typeset my thesis (Master's thesis in astronomy) and I like the idea of a thematic quote to begin a chapter. However, I am wary of seeming unprofessional or tacky so I am curious to get some more thoughts on the matter.

In my humble opinion, that quote by Knuth would fit before a chapter in a CS thesis about bugs in compiler implementations or something similar, i.e. somewhere where there is a plausible connection to the material. In front of a 'code' chapter in a physics/astro/chem thesis, it honestly sounds like "my code might be wrong but I'm quoting Knuth so that makes it less bad" to me.

You are right, I suppose it would give that impression (here's hoping I don't need to write a chapter on bugs). A thesis is no place to be self-deprecating!

"The quoting of an aphorism, like the angry barking of a dog or the smell of overcooked broccoli, rarely indicates that something helpful is about to happen." — Lemony Snicket

Well-chosen, non-frivolous epigraphs can enhance a thesis.

So can spending the time looking for epigrpahs on research/writing instead.

Based on my tips for writing up, this should be done before starting to write up.

@DanielE.Shub If you have to actively spend time finding an epigraph, it is very likely one that will only annoy your readers due to sounding artificial. Either the epigraph comes intuitively from your mind or it's not worth the ink.

Hey, that's a perfect epigraph!  Well-chosen, non-frivolous epigraphs can enhance a thesis. --Dave Clarke

"Yo, dawg, I heard you like epigraphs." — Xzibit

@JeffE Were you calling me? :D

To paraphrase an old joke, and risk the disapproval of Dave Clarke and Daniel E. Shub: What do you call someone whose PhD thesis contains a frivolous epigraph that they spent a while finding?  Answer: "Doctor"!
Keep in mind that to first order, nobody will ever read your thesis.  Ok, you will, and your advisor will probably read most of it, and perhaps some of her future students will look through it for ideas.  And your family might flip through the first few pages to be polite.  Otherwise, what people will read are the papers you publish based on it.  Therefore, it doesn't really matter very much whether you include an epigraph or not, as few will read the thesis, and fewer will notice the epigraph.
Personally, I enjoyed choosing a "frivolous" epigraph for my thesis; it did take an hour or two that I could have spent writing, but nobody can spend all their time writing, and it was a good stress reliever.  I don't think it enhances the thesis, particularly; I don't really think it affects its merit at all.  But it was one more little thing that helped me get through the process.
Certainly, your epigraph should be in good taste, and not offensive to anyone.  Don't use it as a way to make the thesis sound more impressive; that's a waste of time, because nobody will be impressed.  And if your advisor notices it and objects for any reason, apologize and meekly remove it - they may or may not have a point, but it isn't worth your time to argue about.  But otherwise, if you have fun with it, I can see no reason to object.

"nobody will ever read your thesis" -- maybe, but people will scroll through it (at least if it's on the net) and catch the epigraphs.

I agree with @darijgrinberg. People will only either scroll through it, or use it as a reference if they know it exists and it contains something useful to them. To the first kind of people, little details can make a difference, no matter it's likely to be negligible.

In my field, there are quite a few well-written (and cited) PhD theses. You need to estimate how many people will read it. But if you enjoy epigrams, it's yours to make the decision (but talk to your advisor first).

This really depends on the field. And - it has changed, in the sense that theses used to exist mostly in print and not in large circulation, but these days they're just another kind of document accessible through search engines and digital libraries.

It cannot hurt to have epigraphs, and they do not specifically have to be about your research topic or about research. Epigraphs are indicative of the state of mind of the author at a particular point in time.

One can perhaps distinguish two major categories of epigraphs:

"Serious-tone" epigraphs, which usually the author uses in an attempt to positively influence the reader on his upcoming arguments through a usually wise (or wise-looking) or ingenious (or so the author thinks) quote from a well-known and respected (or so the author thinks) person.
"Light-tone" epigraphs which serve the same purpose but they supposedly do it using the additional weapon called humor.

The author may also honestly believe that the epigraph sums up some of his upcoming arguments (or opens the gates for them) in a way that surpasses his capabilities, and uses the epigraph with true respect and admiration.
But the "influencing strategy" seems to be the thought that comes up to people's minds... which means that usually, only "respected persons" can get away with using epigraphs of other "respected persons", without the risk of looking like they are trying to manipulate their readers...
On the flip-side, who can resist a great epigraph?

It depends on their frequency - personally, while I do enjoy one nice epigraph at the very beginning of a thesis, I consider one on each section (or every ten pages) overkill and rather disturbing the reading flow. But on a divide, e.g. between the introducing theory and your own contribution, a second epigraph is surely ok as well.
Ultimately, it really is a matter of your own taste; an epigraph may make the reader smile, but they can easily skip it if they just need raw facts at that moment.

On an unrelated note, please don't use smart-ass Latin à la quidquid Latine dictum sit altum videtur to justify that choice of language back in school...

Why not? It is fun to decipher, and get a bit nostalgic if you knew the language, and a bit exploratory, if you don't. In both cases you have the opportunity to share an in-joke with the author. I am not a fan of the modernist joyless attitude to writing and, while some will be, I do not think that those who aren't should be punished.

@CaptainEmacs It certainly depends on the context - if it's a small part of e.g. the introduction, which can be easily skipped without eliminating any chance of grasping the importance of the remainder of that sentence or even the entire paper, so be it, but frankly I'm a Physicist and when someone writes a theoretical paper containing "of course, ε>0 is a condicio sine qua non", I'd be really pissed off that I have to google this first just to learn whether the criterion was mandatory or optional à la "can be easily generalized to any ε≠0"

Plus, personally I consider it being smug... But yes, depending on the context and subject, it might even be something remotely approaching an approximation of what some might possibly consider calling fun. Mayhaps. And I totally agree, there is no reason why reading a paper shouldn't actually be enjoyable - but it strongly depends on the field how that can be achieved, and failed attempts to publish something enjoyable are usually even less appealing than publications without joy (specifically) in mind

I agree that the core text should be accessible. However, I never understood this "smugness" label which I see increasingly applied to people who had a broad education. It seems to be increasingly considered bad manners to show that one has enjoyed some classic education. Well, that would explain why students seem to restrict to a increasingly narrow band of words today. It's not pleasurable to read the typical paper these days. If one reads the classic papers/books by Einstein or Sommerfeld, their presentation is so much more fascinating to follow than the flat-leveled modern prose.

@CaptainEmacs Let me elaborate on "smugness": I absolutely appreciate someone with broad (or simply different) education teaching me something new/better - that is why I read their publication to start with. But the Latin phrases I encountered so far always rather seemed to serve no purpose other than using a formulation too exotic and more like showing off. I also enjoyed Einstein's original papers, but I cannot honestly say whether part of that fascination not merely stemmed from the fascination with the theories they kicked off, but indeed it seems nowadays everything's too rushed...

+1 for "too rushed" - I quite agree. I do not think it's just the theories that make the papers great. Many smart people (not all) used to write very lucidly; it was them that came up with the ideas, so they know the motivations for making the steps they do, unlike all the "copy/pasters" that came after them and, regurgitating material, often left out important arguments. I can also mention Born/Huang's textbook (as opposed to later Solid Matter textbooks, and for Sommerfeld, I had only his textbook in mind, not his scientifically original papers). But I get your point.

Relevance is king in such questions. However, I remember, many years ago, to have read a nice epigraph, or actually two, paraphrased here from memory:
"The thesis must be an original work of the candidate." (PhD Examination Regulations, University of xxx)
"There is nothing new under the sun." (Ecclesiastes)
Both on one page. I thought that was wise and humble, and actually quite ironic.

I disagree about the humble irony. The first quote is a cornerstone of the scientific method. The second is a piece of religious dogma that is absolutely irrelevant to science. It sounds like the author is trying to say something along the lines of: "you cannot invent or change the laws of the universe, thus nothing is original". Seems rather naff to me, and perhaps a little arrogant. An abstruse attempt to be self-deprecating?

@Moriarty I do not see the religious dogma in the statement. I rather see there a disillusioned person, probably in advanced age. Someone who has seen too much. Think "Old Professor who looks down at the youngsters who think they have been so original, unaware that few of them - if any - are"? Who knows? But in the reactions I have seen in this thread, epigrams have elicited more than once the reaction of "smugness" or "arrogance", so I suspect, as depressing as it is, I should adjust my response to recommend avoiding epigrams if possible, as they may come across wrongly, e.g. as arrogant.

It is a quotation from the Hebrew Bible (although Ecclesiastes does sound rather like the name of a Greek philosopher). Dogma may be too strong a word for that particular part – canon or dictum might be more fitting.

@Moriarty I am quite aware of its provenance. However, I do not think it is fair to interpret texts by where they come from if what they contain speaks strongly for itself. Hitchens and Dawkins, both avowed atheists, are reported to have liked that book (google it). It's far closer to life philosophy and almost Schopenhauerian pessimism than religion, and certainly, over large passages, one of the most undogmatic (or even antidogmatic) texts in the bible canon. One can disagree with the message or its relevance to science, but to shoot it down as "religious dictum/dogma" is eristics.

You make a good point, I must agree with that! I don't dislike the quote because of its religious origins, specifically. It's not a spiritual statement. I dislike the author using it to whimsically dismiss scientific progress.

Fair enough @Moriarty. However, the work was in a stagnating scientific field, and it showed in the thesis :-) Yes, these were new measurements, no, there were limited new insights. So, I guess the quote was appropriate.

The other answers are certainly good, too, and/but my reaction is that choices of epigraphs are like poetry or philosophy written when one is young... just seem silly later. Now, yes, the same seemingly-proscriptive criterion can be applied to almost all human activities... but/and the question really becomes whether one plans to be indulgent, later, of the young self, or whether one will be annoyed or regretful or embarrassed. Meanwhile, other people, at their own analogous stages, will perceive youthful choices of epigrams as just that... probably not as necessarily either greatly entertaining or profound, any more than philosophizing or humor of every age-demographic seems insightful or funny to other demographics.

The thesis is a proof of what was achieved. The writing might not be up to the level one reaches with tenure. Looking back, is is the documentation of a reached step. That's not only true on writing skills, knowledge regarding the topic but also for humor.

My opinion, and for theses in science or engineering:

Avoid multiple epigraphs in your thesis. Use either no epigraphs, or one in the introduction and/or one for the summary/conclusion. Many epigraphs in a thesis always see to me to be a little... overly presumptuous, perhaps a little self-aggrandizing. And sometimes you even come off as being a smart-ass rather than well-read.
Consider epigraphs in a book or book chapter (e.g. one based on your thesis), where more narrative flair is appropriate in general.

Epigraphs are an excellent feature to enhance a thesis.
I asked my advisor when showing him the first version of my epigraph --- that could be a kind of precondition to do that (if you wanna be sure that your advisor agrees with your intention).
Naturally, a (serious / scientific) context must exist between an epigraph and your concent. Too many funny qoutes could be declined by readers.

Epigraphs are never suitable. They are distracting and unprofessional. Stick to the subject of your thesis and nothing more. Time spent researching epigraphs is time better spent researching and writing your thesis. If a quote is relevant to your work, such as the Knuth quote, then put it in the thesis and explain its relevance to your subject.


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Does working for a university as a postdoc with a PhD (under supervision of a PI) concur alma mater status?
If you worked as a postdoc, on a grant for example as many do. A situation where it's basically felt to be a glorified continuation of your PhD, with the same routine of checking in and giving progress updates to your PI (who has just replaced your or literally is your old supervisor), are you still able to consider that school your alma mater?
A post doc is usually a situation where you're not technically a student, though you retaining the same rights (auditing classes, expected 1 on 1 with professors, etc). Enough of to be a nourishing mother, or just a stretch?

In the US, "alma mater status" doesn't mean anything in particular. Why do you ask?

@AzorAhai-him- bragging rights…

That would be a stretch. It is nice that you have such a nice experience with your first (in some countries, second) real job. In your future jobs you will continue to learn, and hopefully feel a sense of belonging to those employers as well. But calling them an alma mater would just be confusing.

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Can I publish research in a peer-reviewed journal if parts of it have previously been published in a self published book?
The book was not published in English, and I am using a different perspective in the paper, but the same qualitative data.

Some journals may say no. If you decide to do so - the existence of prior published product should be clearly stated in the cover letter and the book should be referenced by the article.

I didn't find any formal policies addressing this specific case, but my intuition is that it would probably be all right.  It could be analogous to publishing sections of a thesis, which is generally accepted.
If you have a journal in mind for the paper, you could contact the editors and ask their position on the issue.  If and when you eventually submit the paper, you should include a note to the editor explaining the situation, and probably mention this in the text of the paper as well.  If you disclose everything, there won't be any ethical issue; the editor can make the decision, and I expect there would be some good journals that won't have a problem with it.
Factors that might be relevant:

Was the book offered for sale publicly, or distributed privately among colleagues?
How many copies were produced/sold?
Did you retain the copyright on the book?

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Should I mention PhD in the header of my industrial résumé to catch the recruiters' attention?
I've recently left academia and am looking for a job in industry, mostly in R&D, in the areas of machine learning, computer vision, data science etc. Should I mention in the header "John Doe, PhD" instead of just "John Doe" to catch immediate attention of recruiters?

Does you resume not reveal your education?  Then there is no need to insert "Ph.D." here and there as well.

I guess I'm the ideal person to answer, as I made exactly this transition a few years ago and now help review resumes for job candidates in ML R&D.
Typically the top of a resume has the person's name, often in enormous font. I would recommend putting "Science Man", not "Science Man, PhD" here. Of course, it is a small difference, but the latter would raise a few question for me:

Does this person realize who we are? We may be "in industry", but for a research position, many/most of our competitive applicants have PhDs. Indeed, it's much easier for us to find new PhDs than people with 10+ years experience, PhD or no.
Does this person have realistic expectations? Of course industry salaries are higher than academia, but we've had incidents where recent graduates expect us to be so impressed by their PhD that they are unprepared for the interview or have massively unrealistic salary expectations

Of course, you should absolutely mention your PhD near the top of your resume, not disagreeing with that.  Even a bone-headed recruiter won't miss your PhD if it's near the top of the first page. I would recommend either:

A "summary" right below your name where you have ~2 sentences including the word "PhD" (e.g., "Recent PhD/Former Professor/Experienced Researcher in [blah] seeking research opportunities in machine learning"); or,
Putting "skills" right below your name where you have bullets of buzzwords (tensorflow, kafka, system integration, electronic design, etc.), and then listing your PhD in the "Education" section directly below that.

Yes, mention it. However, it may not have the cachet you expect. I was once advised not to reveal my doctorate in applying for an industry position as it was felt that being a "pointy headed intellectual" wasn't especially compatible with the "down and dirty" needs of industry.
I wasn't advised to lie, just to sort of neglect to reveal.
Hopefully, times have changed. You want to come across as well qualified for whatever position you apply for, of course. That might depend more on experience than education in some situations.

Thanks for your answer! That's true, having a PhD alone isn't enough, but then again for the positions I'm looking for (e.g. data scientist, machine learning etc. in R&D), there're a high number of PhD's and sometimes they require the applicants to be a PhD.

Then mention is certainly. In many (most?) places it is generally how you present yourself formally.

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How to demonstrate programming knowledge in CV, while applying to academia and industry?
I'm currently looking for both postdoc position(preferred) and industrial position in areas where I'd need to do programming in the language(s) my lab/company will need me to. The academic areas I'm looking for are computer vision, computational neuroscience etc.
However, my Ph.D. was in pure mathematics and I didn't write a single piece of code. In my current postdoc, I'm programming but so far don't have a published result that clearly demonstrates my coding skills (in matlab). Given this situation, how can I best demonstrate my coding skills in my CV? I mean, evryone will write: "Programming languages known: a,b,c" etc. But I'm not sure (I might be wrong) that's enough? So how could I best demonstrate that I know decent matlab and I can build algorithm?
One idea that's occurring to me is to make a paragraph named "programming experience" after "programming languages known", saying for example, "I numerically solved the differential equation (*) in this language: code available upon request".
I'd appreciate your opinion, thank you!

Add a website to your CV header, preferably in a noticeable parameter, such as your name, put those projects into your website under the portfolio section. Here be mine. http://albertkung.com/#portfolio I was stuck in the job market for almost a year. The month I put my website up, 4 interviews, all of which commented on my well-designed website, and then 4 offers.

Part of your question is about a CV for industry which is off-topic for this site.

Maybe a bit off-topic, but I would advise against calling Matlab a programming language in your CV - it is a scripting language, and you might upset some very peculiar people if you claim it to be a programming language. As for an on-topic advice - I would put it under your current employment/project experience as part of what you did.

Also, instead of saying you solved a math equation in code, if you want to demonstrate that you have coding knowledge it's probably best to talk about the the actual skills involved with coding (writing functional arguments, loops, vectorizing code, whatever...) - this demonstrates knowledge. I guess as an example: "I ran non-linear regressions in X program" is bad vs. "I used X program on data of size X to solve X problems, wrote functional arguments to streamline future analyses, vectorized code to reduce computational time by a X%. A CS major probably would say it better than I just did.

I would recommend not trying to use the same document to apply to qualitatively different positions.  Typically, companies do not want a CV, they want a resume.  Prepare a resume following industry standards, which includes your skills, programming languages, etc., and use that for your industry applications, while you use your CV to apply for postdocs.

I thought "CV vs resume" is "English English vs American English"?

I kinda thought so too...but apparently there're webpages stating the differences between the two!

In the United States, at least, the two are starkly different; I do not know about other countries.

In the usage I'm accustomed to, "CV" is the general term, and its length can be anything from one page to tens of pages. "Resume" is a more specific term with a strong corporate flavor. There are probably major regional differences in the usage of the terms, which is why people should not assume any specific meanings in an international context such as the Internet.

One possibility is including links to projects and code that you wrote. For example on github, or you might have a Matlab Central profile where you uploaded functions that you wrote (it helps if you can show lots of downloads and good ratings).
Of course if you have a Stack Overflow profile in good standing it might help in circles where it is recognized.
You might also want to use wordings found in this Programmer Competency Matrix to state specific aspects of programming that you already master.

When somebody applies to a position in academia; he may have to present some recommendation letters from professors with whom he have worked or from his past employers. So, your current postdoc mentor or a professor with whom your have worked before may be able to state and indicate in your letter of recommendation (if he is writing one for you) that you have some experiences of programming when you had worked or did research under their supervision. In this case, I encourage you to consult with the people writing recommendations for you about how they can include something about your programming activities under their supervision in their letters of recommendation.
Also, if you have passed some programming courses or did teaching assistance for programming courses in your university or research institute, these can also be considered as proof of your programming knowledge.

I've never heard about recommendation letters from past employers in industry. At least in US, there are possible legal consequences, so every employer I know will limit reference info to positions held and dates of employment.

In some other countries, employers are legally required to give a certificate of employment, which is quite similar to many letters of recommendation.

Ditto: No one asks for letters of recommendation in American industry. A phone call might be as far as it gets, even then I doubt HR departments would deal with needing to get on a PIs calendar for a chat, they'd just move to the next contact. Defamation lawsuits should be a real concern. In academia the letter of recommendation is everything. I often wonder with an advisor with no industry contacts/experience, what's the point of even putting person as a reference? They likely wouldn't no how to interact with that context.

With respect to all the points above, I indicate that my answer is for a person seeking a position in academia. Also, I repeat that questions about employment in industry and non-academic positions are off-topic to this site.

@EnthusiasticStudent- you might want to edit your answer, as you brought industry into the mix: "When somebody applies to a position in academia or industry;"

All coding projects should go on Github. If not just for best practices, it's really the only way to demonstrate your ability within and across languages. Don't upload data, obviously, but unless you are working on proprietary CS concepts or algorithms, I don't understand why there would be an issue posting your code.
Then just link to your Github account in your CV, along with the obligatory "languages known" clause in the CV. I've got a hyperlink in my CV that has done it's job, because despite being much junior in rank than you, it was responsible for landing me a short term government gig as a contractor.

If you contributed in any way to a major piece of work involving programming/scripting languages, I would put that on your CV as its own paragraph with a VERY short description of it and how you contributed.
Since you mention your background in math, consider how that played into the project. Did you implement any algorithms or help a "main" programmer understand a particular equation so they could use it? Perhaps you searched for different mathematical methods for solving your problem and had to consider their relative merits before choosing which would be most appropriate.
While often overlooked, these are incredibly important tasks for software design. This becomes especially valuable if you are considerably stronger in this area than those in the group you intend to work with.
A code portfolio will also become almost mandatory as others have mentioned.

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Is there a website where I can post my CV where potential academic employers can find me?
Is there a website where I can post my CV where potential academic employers can find me? To be more precise, I'm looking for postdoctoral position in the areas that uses differential geometry but could also use statistics, for example, computational neuroscience, computer vision, manifold learning etc.
P.S. this is my main question. But if you could answer the same question for industries for using the above topics and could access my CV online, that'd be well appreciated, because in case I don't get a postdoc, I'm keeping myself open to industry too.
Thanks in advance!

Have you heard about Stackoverflow Careers? (Industry)

Note that while the question/answer in the linked/duplicate question above refers to faculty positions, the situation is identical for postdocs -- namely that the supply of candidates so outnumbers the number of available positions that there's no need for a centralized CV clearinghouse.

@scaaahu: I haven't so far, but I just requested an invitation.

Academic employers in my experience don't go looking on websites for candidates. We post jobs to our own websites, advertise in professional society magazines, and on certain mailing lists and LinkedIn. We get so many applicants this way, that actually searching out candidates on our own is frequently unnecessary.

actually searching out candidates on our own is frequently unnecessary — I was with you until the last sentence.  Despite the large numbers of applications, it is sometimes necessary for recruiting committees to seek out candidates directly, if only to convince them to apply.  But then we're MUCH more likely to trawl directly through personal university web pages than some common site like LinkedIn.

@JeffE "Frequently uncessary" leaves some room for the infrequent case where it is necessary. Can you say how many times your department has had to do such trawling out of what number of recent hires?

Can you say how many times your department has had to do such trawling out of what number of recent hires? — Much more often for tenured faculty than for assistant professors.  Almost everyone we've hired with tenure over the last decade applied only because someone contacted them and encouraged them to apply. That's probably true of about 20% of our recent assistant professors as well.

@JeffE, interesting and not too surprising. Has it ever been done for a  postdoc?

In my experience, that's the only way to hire a postdoc.  (My experience is limited to theoretical computer science.)


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Research in computational neuroscience or computational medicine in Europe
How popular is research in computational neuroscience, or computational medicine in (mainland) Europe? I'm aware that INRIA in France does some good work, but do you know any other such groups and what kind or topic of research do they so? Many thanks!

Paris Descartes University is a popular place for neurosciences

The Gatsby institute in London does very good computational neuroscience research.
http://gatsby.ucl.ac.uk

Thank you! Do you happen to know any such place in Switzerland, Belgium, France or Luxembourg?

For computational neuroscience in germany, the website of the National Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience (http://www.nncn.de/en) might be a good ressource for you.
They list groups that are part of the Network, distinguishing between "centers" "groups" and "collaborations - i assume corresponding to scale of their involvement in computational neuroscience.

Thank you, and thanks also for the link! Do you happen to know any such place in Switzerland, Belgium, France or Luxembourg?


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Job sites for applied/interdisciplinary jobs in Mathematics?
I was wondering whether there're job sites that post jobs in applied/interdisciplinary mathematics, more specially, say postdocs or higher positions in mathematics and medical imaging, mathematics and computer vision. I'm aware of mostly all the popular job sites, mathjobs, euro math jobs, jobs.ac.uk, nordic math jobs etc etc, but most of the jobs there are of 'pure' nature, with very few for applied/interdisciplinary. I find it a little strange, since it seems (I might be mistaken) that they've more funding in the interdisciplinary areas, which should mean they'd have more available jobs too, but I don't see any!
For my particular case, I'm trying to find postdoctoral position in mathematical imaging problems, which would use significant amount of conformal/quasiconformal mappings, Riemann surfaces, differential geometry etc. I guess looking into individual group's webpage is an option, but that's just too much work, since you've to google them first, then see what groups actually work in your areas, then look at their sites etc. But if there's an webpage containing all the information, that'll be much better!
So, if you know any such website for the above (for Europe and the US), I'd appreciate if you could pass them onto me. Thanks! And sorry for having sounded so shameless about the funding comparison.

Sounds like a computer science problem to me -- have you tried computer science jobs websites?

I will try, thank you. Actually, it also requires a lot of pure math, depending on what kind of problem one's working on.

I know of:

The SIAM Job board
The NA-Digest list, ostensibly restricted to numerical analysis but in practice lists jobs in a wide range of math-related subjects


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In CV, mentioning of a report that summarizes the postdoc research without publications?
During a one year of postdoc of mine in pure mathematics, I didn't publish anything. I definitely did a research report and wrote down the main questions (in the form of conjectures) we were after and some ideas on how they could be solved. I'm now doing a new postdoc in an applied area as my next postdoc, and I was wondering whether it's okay/encouraged/discouraged/harmful to mention that research report in my list of publications/pre-prints. Clearly, it's just an expository report without proving any new results, which will never be published or even put on arXiv, but it does reflect the fact that I was not idle during my postdoc.
What do you think?
Thanks!

I wouldn't list it under "Publications" as it would detract from actually-published papers, and might even look desperate.
Like @shane, I probably wouldn't put it on the CV at all but possibly you could have a section for technical reports and other manuscripts?
Ideally you'd find time to augment it (with partial proofs, heuristics, or other stuff you've done) to form something that could be published.  (In some fields, conjectures with simulation results can form a nice paper.)


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Following literature - What is a good configurable publication notifier?
I would like to keep up to date with public literature in my research field. All relevant publications are of too big a volume to follow and so the problem invites some automatic mechanism of filtering and notification.
Do you know of any good mechanism (desktop\online application etc.) that could be configured to alert on new publications according to specific criteria?
Three criteria that I would think would be very useful in such a mechanism are :

Follow by researcher name - I would like to know of any new publication Prof. X was involved with.
Configurable  citation filter - I would like to know of any new publication which cites any of Prof. X papers or a specific one.
And\Or\Not keywords - I would like to know of any new publication that has both keywords A and (B or C).

Do you know of such existing app? Any recommendation to such (or similar) applied functionality would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

Have you checked out google scholar alerts? http://scholar.google.com/scholar_alerts?view_op=list_alerts&hl=en

That may work for Author or in-title alert. Logical operations (i.e. watching all someone's papers except those related to something), keyword or citations won't work.

I don't think it's quite a duplicate, but the answers to this question have good suggestions: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7615/how-to-stay-on-top-of-recent-literature

Your institution (for example its Harman Science Library) and many others have the database product Web of Knowledge. Precisely the alert criteria that you described, and more, are available through that product.
The selection of journals covered in its flagship collection, Web of Science, is curated with the goal to cover all of, and more than, the core literature of all scholarly fields, naturally without attempting to cover all journals in existence. Alerts in Web of Knowledge can also simultaneously search up to a dozen other collections including Medline, depending on your institution's subscription. You can see the collections in the subscription that is available to you by choosing the "Select a Database" tab. You can browse and search the journal lists for the various collections.

Yiha! Seems like exactly what I have searched for. I should really meet more with our librarian :) Thanks!

Google Scholar alerts are certainly one (slightly crude) solution. But there are other databases out there that allow much better controlled searching and which do email alerts. My university gives me access to a university-branded version of EBSCO Discovery, but others do exist - some generalist and some especially suited to particular fields.
Assuming that you are affiliated with a university or similar, I recommend asking your university library what they recommend.
Alternatively, sites such as ScienceDirect allow you to set up similar alerts, but they only apply to journals that are published on those sites (so with the example of ScienceDirect, you would only be told about articles in Elsevier journals). Depending on the publications that are relevant to you it might be possible to set up similar alerts on a few different publishers' sites to get good coverage.

EBSCO's GUI seem very friendly. I will definitely check it out. Thanks!

If you are in life sciences, I suggest two methods.

PubMed updates: PubMed is the database that contains the abstracts of all life sciences publications. If you register (free), you can have query updates sent to your mail regularly. The way this works is that you run a database query once (these queries can be quite advanced), and then all new results to this query are compiled and sent to you. This is a good method if you want to keep up with every publication in a relatively field.
F1000: The Faculty of 1000 is a group of ~5000 scientists that regularly read papers and rank papers of special interest along with a short explanation. If you register (not free unless your institute has this service), you can also receive weekly updates according to specified sub-fields of interest. This is a good method for keeping up with interesting publications in a wide field (where the PubMed search would just give too many results).

I actually use PubMed quite a lot, but didn't know of the re-query feature, which would be very very useful :) I was also not aware of the F1000 project which would be good to broaden scientific horizons, which I would also consider very important. Thanks!


text:
How to motivate people to participate in a survey, can I include a call for participation in a paper?
I am designing a system which is based on text sentences of a specific domain, so that no corpus exists. In order to evaluate, which types of phrases occur, and how often, and to not be biased by my own input, I need theses sentences from other people. Thus, I created a Google forms survey.
Despite posting on relevant mailing lists, offering a significant shopping voucher for a random participant and having my twitter call re-tweeted hundreds of times, I only received about 50 sentences, mostly from my colleagues. While this allows the development to go ahead, I fear that it doesn't give me a picture as accurate I would like of the typical input, especially the rarely used phrases. Also I expect it to negatively impact the credibility of my paper.
My questions:

How can I motivate more people to take part in the survey?
Is it OK to put the URL of the survey in the first paper and hope that this attracts more participants for an improved version later on or is that seen as unwanted advertisement?

It should be fine, but what's the lead time on publishing in your area? If it takes a year for your first paper to come out, is that OK?

This appears to be human subjects research.  Most likely you are required to obtain approval form an institutional review board before you begin.  The board will tell you what incentives are not allowed.

How come you cannot find an existing corpus that meets your needs?

@BillBarth The paper needs to come out soon, as there is a deadline.

@AnonymousPhysicist The work itself is computer science, the text gathering is only a prerequisite. We do not have such a board. There is no existing corpus because no one writes queries for a nonexisting system on his own.

@KonradHöffner I only know American rules, but I think you should reconsider.  A journal may refuse to publish your work if it is not approved in advance by an appropriate body.  In the US, only the institutional research board may determine whether the research requires approval by the board or is exempt.

Putting a call for participation in a survey in a paper is a bad idea for several reasons:

You would be putting an ephemeral request in an archival publication that people may be reading a decade from now.  That's just plain gauche.
It is likely to be difficult to get appropriate human subjects approvals
Scientists reading your paper are a highly distorted sample population.

As a more effective alternative, may I suggest looking into Amazon Mechanical Turk, which has gained a lot of popularity in recent years as a means of recruiting study participants?


text:
Mention impact factor or conference acceptance rate in CV
Some people, in their CV or publication list, add bibliometric information to each entry. I've typically seen:

mention the impact factor of each journal
number of citations of each paper
mention the acceptance rate of each conference

I'm not sure it is very helpful: people from your field will surely know the journals/conferences, while people from outside your field might be more interested in a “macro” view and not go into the minute details of your publications.
Moreover, I'm not sure I like the tone it conveys: it feels like bragging (this is typically done by people who are proud of these indicators), and a bit over-the-top to me. Finally, it's well accepted by now that things like the journal impact factor are a poor measure of individual papers' merits.
So: is it accepted practice to do it? does it improve the CV? or does it risk alienating the reader?

Let's assume you want to include the IF: which one do you include? The one which was current when you selected the journal? When you submitted the paper? When you revised/resubmitted it? When it was accepted? When it was published? Two years after publication? The largest of them all? Or the latest one? [And do you keep track?] Listing just the impact factor raises questions like these, which you want to avoid: it does not improve the CV, in my opinion. Explaining in long detail which exact IF you cite? Does not improve the CV, either. This is an important reason for me to not include IFs.

Although that's an old question: On CV that sent for the departments it seems useless and I guess even negative. Negative because it is saying to the committee that they may be unfamiliar with good journals of the field. Or it can show that the person is so naiive that wants to pride to having a number of publications in good journals by bolding their IF. Also, it shows that the person doesn't know that there are good famous journals which their IF is less than some ordinary journals, and he is unfamiliar with what actually IF shows.

You should not put journal impact factors in your CV.  Here's why:

By doing so, you imply that the IF is a useful indicator of the value of individual article(s) you have published in a journal.  However, the IF is not a useful indicator in this regard, and was never intended to be.

You also give the impression that your research does not stand on its own merits -- that it is worthwhile only because it was stamped by a high IF journal.  If your research really is important, use the grant application to explain why.

As other comments have stated, anyone in the field already knows the good journals -- and they're often not the ones with the highest impact factors.  IF is poorly correlated with expert opinion.

You may still disagree, so I will appeal to your self-interest.  Including the IF will leave a poor impression with evaluators who understand the limitations of the IF.  They may even be signers of the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), which states among other things:

...the Journal Impact Factor has a number of well-documented deficiencies as a tool for research assessment. These limitations include: A) citation distributions within journals are highly skewed [1–3]; B) the properties of the Journal Impact Factor are field-specific: it is a composite of multiple, highly diverse article types, including primary research papers and reviews [1, 4]; C) Journal Impact Factors can be manipulated (or "gamed") by editorial policy [5]; and D) data used to calculate the Journal Impact Factors are neither transparent nor openly available to the public [4, 6, 7].
General Recommendation: Do not use journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact Factors, as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess an individual scientist's contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions.

In short, by trying to use the IF to establish value of your research, you're only broadcasting your ignorance, as even Wikipedia can tell you:

It is important to note that impact factor is a journal metric and should not be used to assess individual researchers or institutions.

I feel this is a nice political statement (and I even agree that IFs are largely bogus for judging individual papers), but this is, I think, pretty bad advice. The chance that a reviewer feels so strongly about IFs that (s)he holds reporting them against the candidate seems very small in comparison to the potential upside of having a reviewer that values IFs.

@xLeitix that's a good point. In this case I indeed want to maximise my chances over passing a political message, and the agency I'm submitting to hasn't signed the DORA.

Excellent point re (over) reliance on IF to evaluate one's own research.

A professor (chemistry) I had once told us in the lunch break about a CV where the applicant (for a position in the medical faculty) had listed impact factors and summed them up. He was not only alienated but outright upset.
However, that was years ago and things may have changed. But I still think it weird and in my field have not seen it (chemistry/spectroscopy/chemometrics).

I would say that this is field specific. I work in a very interdisciplinary area and I have seen, for instance, in the field of HCI (Human-Computer Interaction), it is quite common to list acceptance rates for the major conferences (CHI, CSCW, UIST, MobileHCI etc.). HCI is very conference dominated in terms of major publications.
However, in the field of privacy (which I also consider myself affiliated to), journals matter. Everyone knows the best journals in the area (CACM, IEEE Privacy and Security etc.) so almost nobody lists impact factors or numbers of citations. Therefore, in response to your specific questions.

In some fields it can be an accepted practice, in others, not so much.
It might improve the CV in terms of informing folks looking at your CV who are not in your discipline (perhaps other members in a search committee). But, I don't think it really improves your CV per se.
I think that there is a very low risk of actually alienating the reader. The reader is usually bound to be a scientist or academic and I don't think that the vast majority of them would get annoyed to see such numbers (especially if they are in disciplines where this is an accepted practice)

My approach for this is simple - I add all information that I think will help my case.
You have a high citation index for a researcher of your academic age? Mention it explicitly in your CV.
You have published in high-impact journals? Add the IFs to your publication entries.
You have a particular paper that won a best paper award or is very highly-cited? Highlight the paper in your publication list and name the award / citation count.
Note that this is not "boasting". You are simply making the job of the reviewer (correctly assess your merits) easier by highlighting the information that is likely important to them (awards, important publications, etc.) instead of letting them search for themselves for the high-value needles through the haystack that is your publication list.
Edit:

One of the papers raised a pretty large number of citations (several hundreds) despite being published in a low IF, so I wonder how to carry this information...

Add both informations. If your paper was high-impact, it should not matter too much that the journal in general is low-impact.

"If your paper was high-impact, it should not matter too much that the journal in general is low-impact." Yeah, and if your paper has a tiny number of citations, it doesn't matter diddly-squat if it's published in a "high-impact" venue.  Why do we have impact factors again??

@DnuorgSpu Not sure if you are being sarcastic or not (Internet problem :) ), but I am assuming this is honest. I would say IF is nice to know in advance whether a journal is visible or not, or if a paper is very young (you can't expect a paper that appeared less than a year ago to already have hundreds of citations). After some time, the IF of the venue becomes meaningless in comparison to the impact of the actual paper.

Fair enough.  For authors I guess it helps answer the question, "will this journal do a good job of marketing my research?"

There is no law for this so apart from any instructions for the application, it is up to you.
The impact factor (IF) will tell the evaluation committee if you publish in good journals (they probably know this anyway since they would be familiar with the field. If you have published in good journals then you should definitely do so. But, a lower IF does not mean the paper is not good but shows that your science can pass the competition to get accepted in higher ranked journals.
The citation index is of course nice to show if you think it is to your advantage. It is impossible to say what numbers are and which are not. Partly because the turn-over time between disciplines vary and partly because it will depend on for long you have written papers. There is a period of varying before your work becomes cited, usually at least a year. I had a paper that now has a very high index but had just a few until five years after publication. So what is a good number for you depends on factors that only you and peers in your discipline can evaluate.
So, if you think these numbers are to your advantage you should definitely add them. Considering you are at the beginning of your career no-one would necessarily expect high citation index and so the IF may be of more interest.

I agree with what you say but in a search committee there may be more than one person and it is not certain all know as much as the one who is the expert in the field. If you know who will look at the application then you can adapt, if you don't then you have to anticipate something and the rule usually becomes "better safe than sorry".

To the commenters: note that the question was about a grant application, not a job application.

Despite my comment giving a reason not to include impact factors in your CV, my answer here is:

Include select impact factors when it matters

When does it matter (in my opinion)?

When you can expect that one of the readers may not be aware of the importance of your journals because they are from a different field than you. Highlight the particularly good ones.
When you have published papers in different fields. You are a engineer working on microwaves, but you helped a medical doctor that you know with statistics in his research work which made you a (legit) coauthor on one of his papers, in a journal that you have never heard about before, but which carries about 15 times the impact of your regular engineering journals? I would include that impact factor alongside a description of that collaboration.
You have very recently published an important paper, and you expect to be cited a lot because this is a hot topic. However, the paper is so new that you only have 1-2 citations. I would mention that impact factor.

I could think of more examples, but I guess you get the idea. Don't overdo it, don't base your whole application on it - certainly don't sum impact factors. But do it where it helps you make a point.


text:
How to find all the articles citing particular two?
It is quite easy given a single article to find all the articles citing it.
However, having two or more articles, how do I find all the articles simultaneously citing these?

Using Google scholar, you can find the articles citing article #1.
Then, you click the box "Search within citing articles" and you do a research for article #2.
Edit: I just realized this question is a duplicate of How to search for list of papers citing both papers A and B?
But I think my answer is far simpler.


text:
Advisor moving to Industry for a year, How should I reapply for PhD elsewhere?
I am in my second year of PhD. A lot of the past 1.5 years was coursework and little research. I have been working with my current advisor for the past 5 months and have a publication in the pipeline.
However my advisor informed me that he is planning to take a year long break from academia to work in industry and plans to come back. Like most of the advisors he offered me the following choices:

Search for a new lab
Continue working with him; keeping in touch over email and occasional skype sessions

However he isn't yet tenured and I am skeptical that he might choose not to return to academia.
My department is a pretty small one and moving to a new lab doesn't seem feasible because I am not interested in other labs' research. In some cases the research is good, but I found the lab environment unsuitable when I rotated with these.
I would like to complete my PhD. Another option is to possibly quit with a Masters and then reapply to other graduate schools. However I have the following concerns:

If my advisor is against giving me a recommendation letter, should I still apply rather than looking for another lab in my current university?
My graduate school GPA is average and so was my undergraduate GPA, I have couple of publications since joining the graduate school. Will a low Graduate school GPA further reduces my chances of getting an admit again?
Should I mention my situation(about my GPA; quitting PhD because advisor moved) in my Statement of Purpose?

As an anecdote: my supervisor spent 11 months on sabbatical in another country in the middle of my PhD. We hade Skype meetings roughly every other month. I visited him once, for a week. Now I'm probably more independent in my work than the average PhD student, but this worked fine for me.

I should mention, I did have two advisors, the other one being in industry. @mhwombat's answer below is very good.

A third option would be to continue to work with your advisor when he moves to industry, but to have a second advisor in your institution. This second advisor's primary role could be to guide you through the PhD process, so he or she may not need to be in the same field as you. They can help you improve your academic writing skills, and your research skills, offer moral support, help you brainstorm, act as a sounding board for ideas, etc. As you go through your PhD, you may find that you need this kind of help at least as often as you need more technical help.
The company I work for has close ties to nearby academic institutions, so it is common enough that one of us will jointly supervise an MSc or PhD student when their project is somewhat relevant to our industry.
I am also a PhD student, and have two academic advisors. I find this quite useful, as they have different strengths.


text:
Uploading an elaborated proof from a published paper on arxiv
I have elaborated a proof from a paper published on arxiv to make it more intuitive. There is no new innovation in my approach nor does it review the other related proofs for the problem. Is it worthwhile uploading this to arxiv?
I do believe it will add value to the understanding for a newcomer to the field, but it doesn't really add value to anyone who is an expert in the field.

Yes, I think that's a great idea.  arXiv is a good place for expository work like this, which may be of value to the scientific community (experts or learners) but isn't novel enough to be published in a journal.


text:
Are there any good math journals where the editors are champions of publishing short mathematical discoveries?
My preprint is on a topic that is based on high-school math and yet contains a fundamental discovery, but it is getting desk rejected from journal to journal because it does not fit the mould of articles that they usually recieve - mine is just 2 pages of which 50% is figures because I rely on a geometric proof.
P.S. I have tried Nature, Linear Algebra and its Applications, Applied Mathematical Letters, and Information Sciences so far.

Are you an undergraduate or a high school student? If so, submitting to an undergraduate journal may be an option. (For example, involve https://msp.org/involve/about/journal/about.html)

I assume you've done due diligence to know it's a fundamental discovery, meaning you're deeply aware of the theory behind the area you're working in, and also aware of the research being done? Is this a problem that's been identified as important and unsolved?

It might of course be that your discovery is not, in fact, "fundamental", but simply something every working mathematician in the field knows how to do.

We do not recommend journals. You might be able to rephrase this question as "how to find journals that...." But, I suspect what you really want to know is "how do I get my article published", in which case this question may be helpful.

If your main concern is the shortness of the article, there are journals accepting also quite short papers, as Comptes Rendus Mathématiques or PAMS (Proceedings of the American Mathematical society), but they are quite selective, and what in your opinion is "a fundamental discovery" could be considered something obvious/unimportant/wrong by the mathematical community.
I have to be honest and say that, based on what you say, this seems most likely. However, it could well be that you found something relevant. There are a bunch of such cases in the history of math. So the right thing to do is to let your paper acquire visibility, while making it clear that it is your original work.
Luckily enough, there are resources for that. For instance, did you put your article on ArXiv or something like that?
This can let it have some visibility and, perhaps more importantly, can bring you some feedback.

Yes, I did post it as a preprint on ResearchGate but as you say, I am well aware that it has a flavor that renders itself to be considered as either obvious or unimportant. In short, I came up with a mathematical counter-example to Wolfram's principle of computational equivalence.

@Cel: No one takes Wolfram seriously (indeed on these sorts of topics he's considered basically a crank), so, yes, indeed, what you have done is unimportant.  I won't judge obviousness until I've seen it.

@AlexanderWoo indeed, I am aware of that perception. In my humble opinion, he is the closest we really have to a modern day Feynman and viewing Wolfram as a crank happens to those who may culturally never get the subtleties of Wolfram's research - that's what made him a billionaire and others namecallers ;)

@Cel Can you add the RG link?

@Cel Independent of the community's opinion of Wolfram - why not send your counterexample to him? He's probably the best person to evaluate it.

@EthanBolker Indeed I sent it to him, and am hoping that I get a response in the coming days. But still, I cannot count on the benevolance of a single person and hence my question here about journals where editors are passionate about short communications. I have had an associate editor literally tell me that they were not sure about securing reviewers to complete the process for such a short paper.

@Cel Even if the perception of Wolfram as a crank were completely false (which it isn't), clearly your problem has nothing to do with the length of the paper and everything to do with it being "a mathematical counter-example to Wolfram's principle of computational equivalence", regardless of the fact that some editor might have mentioned something about the length of the paper to you at some point. You're asking the wrong question here. In other words, Dan Romik's answer is spot on.

There are great math journals that regularly publish short papers. The American Mathematical Monthly is one such.
However, you’re asking the wrong question, which is based on the premise that good journals will refuse to publish a paper containing a “fundamental discovery” because its editors are not “champions of publishing short mathematical discoveries” or because your particular paper does not “fit the mould of articles they usually receive”. This premise is completely false.
Before you go any further with trying to publish your paper, it is crucial that you ascertain that it indeed “contains a fundamental discovery”. Otherwise you are just wasting your own time and credibility. You must obtain objective evidence that there are other active math researchers out there who share your view about the paper’s importance. Find some mathematicians willing to look at your paper and get their opinions. Then, and only then, consider your next steps.

To be clear, I am looking for a journal that exclusively publishes short math discoveries. A journal where there is a positive bias towards pictures and negative bias towards Bourbaki style reasoning (I think you get what I mean).  Short Math articles of a style that could be found in a Nature journal (50+ years ago).

@Cel as I said, you’re asking the wrong question, and need to be receptive to the possibility that you have some misconceptions about how math research publishing works. The journal you’re describing does not exist (not as a journal for research math at least). And the journals that do exist don’t have the negative qualities you’re attributing to them that make a journal like that a desirable thing to have in the first place. Anyway, good luck with the project.

let me sharpen my question even further, I am looking for editors who do not consider Wolfram a crank. We have plenty of objective evidence that Wolfram's work is supported by several active math researchers (and also opposed - I am aware).

@Cel Stephen Wolfram is a very well-respected mathematician, for example he is a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, and his work has around 1000 citations on MathSciNet. I don’t think anyone considers his work to be invalid in the way that work by cranks is typically simply not correct. The only thing that’s remotely crank-like about him is that he wildly overhypes the significance of his research, particularly in his book A New Kind of Science. Other than that, he’s a mathematician who has produced valid and quite innovative work, and not a crank by any means IMO.

Okay let me sharpen it even further, I am looking for editors who would consider a mathematical counter-example to Wolfram's principle of computational equivalence - to be a fundamental discovery!

@Cel I’m not aware of any, sorry…

Your best bet would be Wolfram's journal Complex Systems.

@NoahSnyder yeah that would be one of my options. Only problem is that they do not publish recieved and accepted dates on the papers or allow a fully-referenced abstract like Nature (a style that I prefer).

I think you have to find a professional mathematician to take a quick look at your work. The busy editor of a prestigious journal won't do that for you. I suggest you start with a teacher (if you're in high school) or a professor (if you're in college).

Without examining the premise of this question, here are a few reputable journal that welcome very short notes (some already mentioned in other answers):

The Comptes Rendus - Mathématique are a peer-reviewed, open-access diamond electronic journal that publishes original research articles, journal articles, and texts reflecting the activity of the Academy des sciences in the field of mathematics. They publish short articles, announcements of significant new results, but also updates, conference proceedings and thematic issues.
The Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society has been publishing leading research in a broad range of mathematical subject areas since 1969. Research articles accepted by the Bulletin are of high quality and well-written, with a maximum length of 20 pages. The Bulletin also publishes authoritative survey articles (of any length) and obituaries of distinguished mathematicians. The Bulletin welcomes short papers on subjects of general interest that represent a significant advance in mathematical knowledge, as well as submissions that are deemed to stimulate new interest and research activity.
Bulletin of the Australian Mathematical Society aims at quick publication of original research in all branches of mathematics. Papers are accepted only after peer review but editorial decisions on acceptance or otherwise are taken quickly, normally within a month of receipt of the paper. The Bulletin concentrates on presenting new and interesting results in a clear and attractive way.
Proceddings of the American Mathematical Society This journal is devoted to shorter research articles (not to exceed 15 printed pages) in all areas of pure and applied mathematics. To be published in the Proceedings, a paper must be correct, new, and significant. Further, it must be well written and of interest to a substantial number of mathematicians. Piecemeal results, such as an inconclusive step toward an unproved major theorem or a minor variation on a known result, are in general not acceptable for publication. Longer papers may be submitted to the Transactions of the American Mathematical Society. Published pages are the same size as those generated in the style files provided for AMS-LaTeX.
Archiv der Mathematik (AdM) publishes short high quality research papers in every area of mathematics which are addressed to a broad readership and not overly technical in nature. Articles should typically not exceed 10 pages.


text:
Introduction to Programming with Pseudocode
In the University in which I will start teaching the course sequence for Programming goes in this way:

Algorithms and Data Structures
Structured Programming Languages
Object-Oriented Programming Languages

So as you see, the first contact of the students with Programming is the "Algorithms and Data Structures" course in which several programming fundamentals topics are covered (variables, data types, if/else, loops) and also some data structures and basic algorithms. The weird part -at least for me- is that in this first course there no actual programming: all the topics are covered with Pseudocode and Flowcharts written in the Blackboard.
This seems kind of strange for me, and as a new teacher I have little power to change this (Senior teachers said that coding is for latter courses). So, I want to know if any of you is familiar with that teaching approach and if you can suggest me some textbooks that are using that teaching methodology.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

People still use flowcharts????

Beleive it or not, we still do (and I'm not proud of it :( )

There is a language that seems to match well with your approach and it resembles pseudo-code: COBOL. It's common, and business-oriented.

I've no idea about teaching methodology, but real programming (and not only "pseudo-programming") is possible in pseudocode, there are languages that are very similar to pseudocode, like Python and Lua. There are graphical programming environments, like those for modkit and phpblocks. UML can be executable and pseudocode should too. I'm sorry for you and your students :(

@Trylks it would be nice to use Python or Cobol as Dave Clarke suggests, but the course is thought in Spanish and Pseudocode must be in that language :S

By the way, I found this Book that seems to follow a pseudocde approach: http://www.amazon.com/Extended-Prelude-Programming-Concepts-Edition/dp/1576761320/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1396015622&sr=8-2&keywords=Extended+prelude+to+programming%3A+Concepts+and+design . Are any of you familiar with it?

This is exactly the approach taken by the Introduction to Algorithms course at MIT—or at least it was the case back in the early 2000's. The book by Cormen et al. takes a decidedly agnostic approach to programming, and presents everything in terms of pseudocode, rather than adopting any particular programming language.

The teaching approach seems similar, but the contents are different. In my university -besides the title- the first weeks are devoted to data types, loops, functions and basic programming constructs. The MIT course seems more advanced.

I think it is a bad idea. The paper supports everything, and if you make a mistake, it takes skill and time to realise. On the other hand, if you write and run a program, bugs appear because the output is incorrect and you know it. Just think how difficult is to debug a broken program, imagine how much it would be if you don't even know if there is a bug.
It is reasonable for a book to be language agnostic, so the reader can adapt it to their favourite one. But it doesn't mean one can just draw it.
Another lesson to be learned is that there are  algorithms out there that look beautiful on paper, but they can become a hell to implement in actual code.
And finally, designing on paper is a good practice, but it is only valid if you consider all possible inputs. And again, this takes skill and experience, that firstly introduced cannot have. On the contrary, if you have the code, you can throw in anything you can imagine and see what happens.

Does not answer the question. (The OP didn't ask if this is a good idea)

The OP is asking "Any advice would be greatly appreciated.". To me, the OP did ask if this is a good idea.

The OP implied that he knows it's a bad idea, and stated that he has no power to change it.

He can use this as arguments to change it. If the senior professors are reasonable people, they will change opinions if enough supporting evidence is provided. I don't know their side of the story, so I don't know how much is required, but it is definitely not out of scope. After all, changing the teaching method is a possible way of tackle the issue.


text:
Productive but not respected advisor - Should I continue with him?
My situation is the following: I have a very productive but not respected advisor. By productive I mean that he has published a lot, and with not respected that his work is not cited by anyone except himself (his top paper has 20 citations, 15 from himself).
I will get my master's degree in 6 months, so I need to decide where to do my PhD. To be honest I don't know is my advisor doing real science. Am I judging his career too hard? At least I would not hope to be in the same situation as he is after the next ten years. Also, he demands me to do things exactly as he wants, so I have been thinking this issue a lot.
If you think I should not continue with him, can you tell me what kind of publication record I should demand from my advisor?

If you intend to continue in academia, reference letters become very important. A reference letter from a respected advisor will be much stronger than one from a non-respected advisor.

his top paper has 20 citations, 15 from himself — You need hard data.  How does that compare with other faculty in your field, at similar career stages?  (In my department, that citation profile would make me very nervous about the likelihood of getting tenure.) What do other faculty in your department think?

To say that your advisor is not respected seems a bit harsh. Maybe his research does not make any impact, by why turn that into a reflection of the community on him as a person?

One factor you didn't mention is: how do you think your advisor might react if you jumped to a different advisor when you began your PhD studies? Would he think that was a good move – to give you more breadth – and thus support it? Or would he regard that as a slap in the face? If the latter, I'd seriously consider switching institutions.

There are reasons for setting aside the issue of your potential PhD supervisor's publication record for the purposes of deciding whether to carry on  working with him - these reasons are set out in other answers.
You also need to think about whether your - or any - potential PhD supervisor's working habits is a good fit with yours. When considering whether to continue with specifically this supervisor, you comment as follows:

Also, he demands me to do things exactly as he wants, so I have been thinking this issue a lot.

So - is this a good thing for you, or a bad thing? Was that working relationship a positive or not? You mention that you've been thinking about this a lot, and I urge you to be clear about the answer in your own mind before you commit to a PhD program. Perhaps working like this was okay for a MSc project; I suspect that it could well be a problem during a PhD.
What were the experiences of other PhD students in this regard? Did they all have similar feelings regarding how he manages the research of his team?

One of the issues you need to consider is how far along the advisor is in his career. If he is a relatively junior faculty member, then a lack of citations is not necessarily so serious, if they're being published in high-quality journals respected in your field. However, if he's getting a lot of publications in low-tier journals, that could be a sign of a bigger problem. If the faculty member is more experienced (and has been working a long time), this is very much a red flag.
I might recommend that you not continue with the same advisor, but this is only partially motivated by the quality issue. Another thing to take into account is that you should be preparing yourself to have a variety of educational experiences throughout your career, and that means working with multiple people, and on more than one project. If you have only one advisor, you will have only the experiences you've gained working with that one advisor, as well as only have learned the philosophical viewpoints associated with working with the one advisor.

My advisor has been a faculty member at my university for 5 years now. He received his PhD about 10 years ago. Thank you for suggesting to participate in multiple projects - I haven't considered that possibility seriously before.

The first question you should answer is: what do YOU want? Then: Where are your interests within your field? Are there opportunities ot develop elsewhere? Are there any reasons not to move?
These are of course personal question than can only be answered by you yourself. As fo rthe advisor, well 20 citations does not sound like much at all, depending of course on how senior the advisor is. I do not think that the publication record is necessarily the best criteria for selecting a graduate school, the quality (reputation) of the department and university is probably more important. It may be wise to visit and talk to other students about the conditions as well, if that is at all possible.

I have talked to his current PhD students. At least one student was considering to switch to another university (although partly for family reasons).

"Also, he demands me to do things exactly as he wants, so I have been thinking this issue a lot." I too had an issue with authoritarian education.
A group can own a great deal so long as the individual members of that group, here and there through the group, do not have as their sole and only goal (pronoun, capital) I alone must have, I want the power of the group, I want this, I want that. You have to feel that way, you see, if you haven't go confidence in the rest of the group. If you can't have confidence in the competence of your fellow students, then you have the necessity of taking the job on your own back.
A teacher can provide data or facts, but one worth their weight in gold, is one that has the student learn but is respected for thinking for themselves by guiding them to apply the data.


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Preparing for Quals in Math
I will be starting graduate school next semester in mathematics and I have no idea how I am going to fare. My goal for this summer and I am slowly making progress is to go over topics in real analysis, topology and algebra. I am also doing an individual study in multivariable calculus which also covers analysis and linear algebra as well. My big question, which is very broad is, how does one prepare for the quals?

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1720/what-kind-of-questions-can-i-expect-to-see-on-a-qualifying-exam

It is not clear, whether you struggle with a particular topic(s), or you are unsure about the structure / requirements of the exam.

See if your department keeps copies of past exams (most do).  If they do, then working the problems on the old exams is by far the best way to study.
You'll begin to notice the types of problems typically asked (there are some classic ones in each area that you should definitely know how to do), the average difficulty of problems, and most importantly help identify areas you need to brush up on.


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Page number in "list of tables"
This isn't an ideal SE site to ask this question, but I haven't found a better one. Please suggest one if you feel different.
In a "list of tables", what is the accepted convention for the page number for tables that flow over more than one page?
Word and Latex appear to default to the page on which the caption begins, but when the caption is below the table, it doesn't feel natural to me.

There is a Writing and a Latex exchange that might be helpful to you.

@scrappedcola: The TeX SE is more about how to achieve a particular goal with LaTeX or similar formats. I'm not convinced questions on what those goals might be are on-topic there.

I don't know about "accepted convention" but the two reasonable solutions to me would be to either use the first page number or the page range.

IMO the page number should be that of the first page of the table. A slightly different way to solve this: I've always been taught to put captions above tables (and below figures).

If you're trying for precision in the information that is provided to a reader in this list, the ideal solution would be to list the whole page range that is spanned by the table.
If that is not possible, then I think that it would be appropriate to think about this with the same logic that is used for pointers to other multi-page items such as chapter: point to the beginning, since that's where the reader should be starting.
Better yet, however, if you have to have a multi-page table, why not remove it from the "flow" of the text entirely and turn it into an appendix or a supplementary document?


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Are review articles the result of original observations?
I am about to submit a PhD thesis by published work. The university guidelines states that "the content of the papers should be the result of original observations". I would like to include a review article I wrote last year.
This review article does not report novel experimental data, but as a regular review article, it reports "observations" of the current state of research.
Is this view correct? Can I include it in my thesis?

Presumably, this is a question that only members of your  faculty can answer. However, I think it is more common to not consider a review article an original contribution (or observation, which I assume ends up the same).

Elaborating on xLeitix's second sentence, I'd recommend not including the review article in your thesis, even if your university allows it.  Review articles are valuable contributions to the literature, but they aren't original research.  In particular, you don't want it to look like you are padding your thesis to make it look longer or to shore up an otherwise marginal dissertation.  (This isn't fair, but some readers would jump to uncharitable conclusions, and it's not worth giving even a small number of people a bad impression.)

Review papers are typically not considered to have 'content resulting from original observations'. Now, can you include it in your thesis? That depends of what your committee thinks. But that could make a very good introduction chapter.

Isn't such an article likely to feed your literature review section?


text:
Job search when coming up for tenure
I notice that coming up for tenure/getting tenure is often an opportunity to move to another institution (even if tenure is granted). How does this work in practice? Is it common for assistant professors to formally go on the job market the year that they are up for tenure? Do they do it only informally, by asking around? Do schools just make offers to up-for-tenure APs without prompting?
I'm curious how this works, because it seems that often times these moves are worked out shortly after tenure decisions are made, so it seems like they must have been in the works before hand.
I'm most interested in highly ranked US based research universities.

This is a manifestation of game-playing, and is completely understandable once one starts thinking in such terms.
For example, if a person is in an excellent situation to get tenure at their current institution, they are probably in an equally good position to get other jobs, perhaps with tenure.
Another feature: if a person has done good-enough work that they've got outside offers, this can set in motion the getting-tenure process at their current institution.
(Shallowly enough, the "best" certification of one's academic virtue is outside offers.)
At the same time, I think most up-for-tenure assistant profs in the U.S. are not really looking for outside offers as they come up for tenure, so even if they could generate them, they'd not try. For that matter, despite the "rewards", many people find this game-playing obnoxious so don't do it.
To answer another part of your question: yes, most formal job offers only arise after informal inquiries and back-and-forth, because... as with high-school dating... getting turned down is embarrassing. :)
The people who are interested in gaming the system continue to do so after tenure, typically...

I cannot think of any assistant profs in the US who did not actively go on the job market when they were coming up for tenure. This seems to me to be reasonable behaviour even if you have no desire to move because

Getting tenure at your current institution is a bit of a crap shoot.
It is obviously influenced by how good your past work is, but there
are a lot of other factors at play. The success rate is not
particularly high.
I also believe, although have no data to back it up, that having a
tenured offer from one university increases your chances of a tenured
offer from another university. This of course could be correlation
and not causation, but I am not convinced.
Being up for tenure is not a black mark on your CV, being turned down
for tenure and then going on the job market opens up a big question
mark.

"The success rate is not particularly high" -- this must vary a lot, because I know institutions where it is very close to 100%.

Being turned down for tenure and then not going on the job market opens up unemployment.

@DavidKetcheson: Sadly, it does vary a lot, because there are also institutions where the rate is close to zero percent. There are even huge variations within universities. It's got a lot to do with the internal culture of a given department or school.

I can certify that I did not actively go on the job market last year when I came up for tenure.


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What should an undergrad CS student know to publish to a conference?
I'm a junior looking for insights on intro to academia. My GPA is considered low (~3.2), but I believe I have a reasonable understanding and experience in the field I'd like to study and would like to try to submit a paper to a conference to aim for top-10 CS grad schools and see if I really have research interest and potential.
I'm not sure what I should expect and how to plan for the next 1~2 years. Grad school applications are usually due before the spring semester, so I have roughly ~1.5 years to prepare, right? I noticed that the first deadlines for a lot of conferences in the field are between April~June. Will I have enough time to write one? How long does it usually take to publish a first research paper?
I'm planning on asking professors if I can join a project when the semester starts (or ask for a review when I write one? I'm not sure what the options are). I wasn't planning on going to grad school until recently, so I'm not very familiar with this process, and I'd like to hear what you think.

At least in the US, most grad-school applications are due in December or January.  Don't forget about the three-month delay between submission and acceptance/rejection, and the other three-month delay between acceptance and publication.

Why the down votes?

How long does it usually take to publish a first research paper?

That question depends on a lot of factors. Here are a few of them:

What is the significance of your research?
How much of your research is unique, novel, and relevant?
Will other computer scientists be interested in your findings?
How well can you write? How well can you organize your paper?
Where do you intend to publish?

Some conferences and publications are more competitive than others. (Put another way, some have a lower acceptance rate than others.) Much of that depends on who sponsors the conference or publication.
First, you have to do the research (this is not trivial). Significant findings need to come from that research (this doesn't always happen). You have to write that in a way that will appeal to the community (the community can be rather fickle sometimes). Lastly, you have to find some venue where the work can be presented (it's not always easy to find a good match).
If a paper gets rejected, it could be because:

The research doesn't report anything new or significant
The research doesn't report anything of interest to the community
The paper is poorly written
The paper doesn't cite other related research, leading to a credibility problem
There simply wasn't room for your paper in the publication, or it wasn't a good match for that venue

Getting back to your original question, you might be able to publish in a year, if everything goes very smoothly. However, that's a huge "IF." Even established researchers can spend years getting ready for a publication, only to see it be rejected by a committee.
Publication can be a long and arduous process, with plenty of opportunities for obstacles, setbacks, and dead ends. It can be very hard to estimate a timetable, particularly for a first-timer going from start to finish.
Your best bet might be to see what's going on at your university, and see if you can get involved with an established, ohgoing research effort. Before you do that, it might be worth doing a self-evaluation first, so that you're prepared to tell a faculty member what you can offer the research team. For example, perhaps you're a crack programmer, and a research project at your institution needs some software written, in order to complete an experiment or simulation. That might be a more realistic way to get started as a researcher.

First things first -- generally, you do research with the intent to learn something and/or to solve an open problem, not with the intent to publish a paper so you can get into graduate school.  This relates directly to your question:

Will I have enough time to write [a paper]?

Without knowing what you're planning on researching, or how it will turn out, this is unanswerable.  Writing a research paper for publication isn't as simple as saying you're going to do it -- you have to have a legitimate problem to work on, the tools and ability to produce a novel contribution regarding that problem, and the drive to make it happen.  Then, of course, you have to actually write and edit the paper, put together any graphs or other figures that demonstrate your contribution, find a suitable conference (or journal or workshop, etc.) to publish the paper in, and then actually submit it by the deadline.
All of that said, your idea to ask professors about joining their research groups is a good one.  With this plan, you have the potential to:

Find out if you enjoy and have the temperament for research.
Get mentorship from a professor, grad students, or other more experienced undergraduates.
Find out what problems are interesting and worth pursuing.
Practice the steps of going from idea to published results.

Once you find a professor to work with (and again, I suggest phrasing your request in terms of why you are interested in computer science research, and not on the means to getting into graduate school), you will start getting answers to the other questions, like what specific conferences you might want to shoot for.  Obviously, it behooves you to plan ahead in order to meet conference deadlines, but until you start the research, you won't be able to determine whether you will eventually have enough good results to put together a paper.
As a general guideline, it would not surprise me if you can find a good problem to work on and submit it to a workshop or conference within a year and a half.  You might also be able to work on an ongoing project and end up as an author on a paper or two that come from this work.  Good luck!


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Finding number of publications in a subject
I have often seen in review papers in which the author mentions that there are more than # number of publications in the subject, to highlight the importance of the subject.
How are such numbers determined? While searching for certain keywords in websites such as Scopus or ScienceDirect may be useful, it does not necessarily give an accurate number, as some publications may mention the keywords but not actually deal with the subject, while others may use synonyms of the keywords.

Roll 3d20 and multiply by 50 :)  I think that would give you a number just as useful as any other method; i.e. impressing the reader while meaning nothing at all.

In medical/life sciences, the situation is slightly better than in other fields since indexing in PubMed is the standard for a manuscript to be considered a "real" publication. I suspect that in life sciences, stating that there are more than x publications on a subject means counting the number of hits found when searching for that term on PubMed.

First, I would argue that a precise number would be virtually impossible to obtain. This is because there is a large grey-zone between work published in established journals and work "published" in more "questionable" sources. Obviously the way to obtain a number would be to use search services such as Web of Science, Scopus etc. or reference data bases. But, for example, Web of Science only covers works published in ISI listed journals or papers referenced by ISI listed papers and on top of that only back in time for as long as journals have submitted reference information. This means such searches will be incomplete. Hence to arrive at a number may require quite a bit of work unless one would state the limitations imposed on a search sich as limting it to Web of science.
The choice of key word(s) will also be important and it is not certain keywords are systematically applied between sources or over time.
A claim to have found "all" literature is very questionable and I would argue that when one makes such a claim one must provide a picture of the limitations of the search because there will certainly always be such limitations.

I agree with @Peter answer.
Moreover, I really doubt this relation of more publications = more importance.
Actually, I see it very weird information in my field (Computer Science) regardless of its source.
To show the importance of a subject, refer to some main papers/findings in that subject, show how and why its important to the general audience of your field. For example, in Computer Science, this can be done through listing some applications/real world scenarios of the subject.

In my field (mathematics) this can become even more questionable because there are papers that consider related problems, papers that consider problems that are essentially equivalent with a different terminology, and so on. The issue of different terminology is especially troublesome because you cannot search for consistent keywords.
Nevertheless this is an important metric. In mathematics you typically cannot point to real-world applications (any way, that is not the kind of importance you necessarily want for your paper). But it can provide context that the problem you are studying has been analyzed before, it gives you some other results that you can compare your paper to, and so on.


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Can portions of my PhD thesis be later submitted to conferences?
It's fairly standard to submit thesis chapters to journals. However, in my field (theoretical computer science) conference publication is much more important. Is there any problem with taking a section of my thesis and submitting it later to a conference? Would the conference object that this was dual submission?

Conferences : computer science :: journals : every other STEM field

Not that there is anything wrong with the answer here or JeffE's comment, but is there a reason you didn't start by asking your advisor or at least someone in your department?

@ Kimball, I spoke to my advisor who did not know the answer, and suggested I ask around. I cannot ask my department because this is a matter of conference policy not departmental policy, but of the conference policy.

In computer science in general, you can submit thesis extracts to conference just as freely as you would submit them to a journal.  In both cases, the principle is the same: a thesis is not really a peer-reviewed publication, so your submission would still be the first peer-reviewed publication of the material.  You must, however, cite your thesis and clearly acknowledge the source of the material as being adapted from your thesis.

+1. Could you clarify the meaning of "extracts" in this context or point to related existing question? Would it be interesting for the community, if I would submit a more general question on strategies (approaches) of converting dissertation into one or more research papers?

@AleksandrBlekh I think that such a question would be good, if you can figure out how to narrow it down enough to not be immediately closed as "too broad"

Well, that was the point of my comment. Such question, being general, would by definition be relatively broad. However, it would be answerable, as I'd request people to briefly outline strategies (approaches) along several suggested dimensions.


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How to list this accomplishment on my vita?
I just saw that one of my research articles was the most-read paper in one of the top journals in my field in February of this year.  What is the appropriate way, if any, to list this on a vita?  It's not an "Award", strictly speaking, so would it be best to just list it as a comment next to the paper?

Related (not exact duplicate): http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9894/should-cv-include-special-note-about-published-cover-articles

And, just to be pedantic, it's "vitae", not "vita".

Great work ! The way I do it is under the Publications section of my CV. The following citation is formatted in the ACM style. You can modify it for your own citation styles.
J1. Smith, J. 2013. "The best paper ever". ACM Transactions of Awesomeness, 1 (4). ACM Press, NY, USA. (most read article in March 2013)


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Benefits of doing Part III at Cambridge (Pure Math) for US PhD applications
I applied to various US Pure Mathematics PhD programs for entry this fall and the responses from my top preferences were not favorable, though some of my lower preferences were. I also have an offer to do "Part III" at the University of Cambridge, which is a 1 year masters degree via coursework (although there is an essay component worth about 1/6th of the assessment). I'm considering the option of accepting this, and then re-applying to the US schools with the hope that my application has improved and I get accepted into one of my higher preferences.

My question is: How do US Mathematics departments view the Part III
  program, and if I do it then will it have a good/bad/no effect on my
  subsequent application?

Some things to consider: The Part III program is intended as preparation for a PhD degree, unlike many Masters degrees that are intended as terminal degrees. Is this well known?
An essay is part of the course - it usually involves giving a unified exposition of several recent papers on a certain topic. Though the content of the essay can be quite advanced, it often does not contain much original research.
The course is from October '14  to June '15, while applications to US schools are due around December '14. This means I will not have had enough contact with Cambridge faculty to get a letter of reference from them. The marks for all the subjects taken are released around June '15, so I won't be able to include any of those marks in my application either. However in the time between now and October I will continue work with my undergraduate supervisor, which should improve my main letter of reference at least a little. My field is algebraic geometry, and my supervisor has said that it would be better for me to go through Hartshorne in the next ~6 months rather than forcing myself to research just yet. So I won't be getting any original research done by the time I apply again.