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Doubt about Reading Project
I'm currently doing a reading project under a PhD student.  It's a fairly advanced topic that isn't taught at the undergraduate level. (For more context the project will be on the basics of "The General Theory of Relativity" which is usually a first or second semester subject in masters) We're doing a series of lectures + problems. If I mentioned this in my CV/SoP/interview will an admissions committee view this in a positive light? Will this be a good addition to my CV?

What is the CV for? PhD applications? I don't think this would be seen in a negative light by anyone.

The CV for my Master's application. Ah right, thank you

You should certainly list it, whether it is treated as a big deal or not. It won't have a negative impact. But if it is a formal course with evaluation and a grade, then it probably also shows up on your transcript. In that case, listing it again, probably has less value.
But, in an application for grad study, you could list it as part of your motivation for current study in some appropriate place. Certainly a willingness to learn "beyond the curriculum" is a good thing.


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Reading Projects for undergraduates
I'm planning on doing some reading projects that lie a little above the undergraduate curriculum. To be more specific, I'm a physics major and I plan on doing reading projects in a few advanced physics topics (eg. Feynman path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics and nonlinear dynamics) and math (eg. group theory, knot theory and complex analysis). I plan on majoring in theoretical physics for my masters where these concepts are very much relevant. Will an admissions committee view this in a positive light? Will this be a good addition to my CV?

Whether it is during your interview, or when they read you SoP, there will always read your enthusiasm between the lines. If you happen to be doing some self-study by yourself, it clearly shows that you are personally interested in the subject and enthusiastic about it.
Plus, by doing undertaking such projects, you will have a much wider perspective about the field and you will be familiar with more complex ideas. So, when they ask you "why do you want to work on this field", you can give a much more specific answer than "I find it interesting".

Thank you for the answer!

A reading program directed by a professor who will somehow examine you on what you have learned is one thing, especially if it comes with a formal evaluation. But a private reading program that has no validation element isn't going to help in admissions or on a CV.
It is something you could mention in an interview, I think, but you would be immediately asked some question about what you have learned from it. You will need to show that you gained some insight from your readings.
That's not to say it isn't a good thing to do, but its face value (to another) is essentially zero with no external evaluation. But if it gives you insight then it will be good for your career in the long run even if you can't show in on paper.

Thank you for the answer!

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Zotero: referencing multi-word organisations like "World Bank" so that it's not, "Bank, World"
I'm using Zotero to manage references, and I've manually inputed a reference to:
World Bank. 2019. "World Development Indicators." URL: http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators

So under author, I typed:
Author: World Bank

[all in the last name field].
When I compile my bibliography, this means that I'm getting the reference as:
Bank. 2019. “World Development Indicators.” http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators.

Is there a way that I can enter a multi-word organisation as an author, and still get my desired output of:
World Bank. 2019. "World Development Indicators." URL: http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators

The World Bank is the publisher, not the author.  Authors are people.

In my discipline, and in the journals that I publish in, for the purpose of referencing, authors are not limited to people at all.

Found the answer:
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/3275/entering-corporate-authors
There's a tiny box to the right of the author names, that if you click on, you can change the setting to a full name.

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


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How does the WissZeitVG count the years of fixed-term employment?
The Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz (WissZeitVG) says:

Die Befristung von Arbeitsverträgen des in § 1 Absatz 1 Satz 1 genannten Personals, das nicht promoviert ist, ist bis zu einer Dauer von sechs Jahren zulässig, wenn die befristete Beschäftigung zur Förderung der eigenen wissenschaftlichen oder künstlerischen Qualifizierung erfolgt.

The fixed-term employment contracts of staff referred to in Section 1 (1), first sentence, who do not hold doctoral degrees shall be permissible for a period of up to six years if the fixed-term employment is for the purpose of furthering their own academic or artistic qualifications. (Translation by DeepL)

How are those six years counted? Suppose I am employed as a research assistant for the duration of the winter semester 2022/23 only and do not work in fixed-term jobs that fall within the scope of the law until winter semester 2028/29. Can I take another fixed-term job in 2028 because I haven't worked in such jobs for the total duration of six years yet? Or can't I take another fixed-term job in 2028 because six years will have passed since 2022?

Firstly, IANAL.
Coming to your question, indeed the use of "Dauer" in the original law text is a bit ambiguous.
If you have a look at phrase(?) 3 of § 2 of that law, however, it is stated that:

(3) Auf die in Absatz 1 geregelte zulässige Befristungsdauer sind alle
befristeten Arbeitsverhältnisse mit mehr als einem Viertel der
regelmäßigen Arbeitszeit, die mit einer deutschen Hochschule oder
einer Forschungseinrichtung im Sinne des § 5 abgeschlossen wurden,
sowie entsprechende Beamtenverhältnisse auf Zeit und
Privatdienstverträge nach § 3 anzurechnen.

This can be roughly translated to:

For (computing) the overall duration of the maximum employment duration, all employments with at least 25% of the normal working time are to be taken into account, and which are at a German university of research institute (according to § 5), as well as (...).

This would make no sense if the correct interpretation of "Dauer" (duration) is "6 years after the start of the first contract, no matter how many months are actually worked in academia".

Adding to this, when you are hired for a position that is covered by the WissZeitVG, you are asked to list all your previous pertaining employments, not only the first one.


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What is the reasoning behind the publication of poems in academic journals?
It came to my attention that some journals in the humanities started publishing poems written by academics. Here are two examples:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1077800417736333
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0740770X.2018.1477243
It strikes me as odd, that these poems do not seem to be published as historical sources or subject of investigation, but as academic contributions on par with peer-reviewed papers. I used to think that it is a common feature of all academic practices that their result is open to scrutiny of some form. Yet I can think of no form of scrutiny that is meaningfully applicable to poems.
What is the reasoning behind the publication of poems in academic journals?

I know some journals that use contributions like this as "filler": if they have space that would otherwise be left blank (e.g. because they start each article on a new page), they print a poem or illustration or short note that wouldn't meet their normal publication standards for significance or novelty, but which they think readers might still enjoy.  The American Mathematical Monthly does this, for instance.  But I am not sure if that is the case here.

I'm not sure what you mean by your remark about "scrutiny", though.  Surely it is possible for a peer reviewer to evaluate a poem for literary merit.  Artistic fields like creative writing, music composition, etc, do this all the time.  This would of course be somewhat subjective, but peer review always contains a subjective element.

Can you provide evidence that the poems are “published as academic contributions on par with peer-reviewed papers”? Journals publish all sorts of content and not all of it is regarded as on par with all other content. For example a correction notice or letter to the editor would not be considered equivalent to a full article.

@NateEldredge Thank you for your remark about the possibility to evaluate poems for artistic merit. It made me realize that I read these poems under the preconception that the publishing journals focus on inquiry of something beyond artistic practice itself and are thus likely to publish contributions that strive for true assertions about their subject. Poems do not strike me as viable media to claim truth, but rather to express authentic impressions and feelings. At least in the case of the second poem, my assumption about the interest of the journal might indeed be false.

@DanRomik No, I have no evidence. My impression is based on the presence of features I deemed typical for articles: an abstract and keywords mentioning „inquiry“, „investigation“ and „methodology“. Furthermore I was indeed unfamiliar with the custom of publishing poems in journals for enjoyment, a practice mentioned by NateEldredge in another comment.

@303 thanks. I guess the things you mentioned are in fact a form of evidence.

Your first reference comes from Qualitative Inquiry journal, that describes themselves as:

Qualitative Inquiry (QI) provides an interdisciplinary forum for qualitative methodology and related issues in the human sciences. The journal publishes open-peer reviewed research articles that experiment with manuscript form and content, and focus on methodological issues raised by qualitative research rather than the content or results of the research. QI also addresses advances in specific methodological strategies or techniques.

Emphasis is mine. It seems that publishing poem in that case comments on the fact that insomnia affects general academic performance. That is an "experiment with manuscript form" that addresses statistics of insomnia.
Your second reference comes from "Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory" which aims to publish:

scholarly essays from interdisciplinary feminist perspectives. For us, “women” and “performance” denote not simply what we study but how we study it—that is, not preconceived objects of analysis, but rather an open assembly of political, ethical, and aesthetic orientations, feminism chief among them. We encourage dialogues among various fields of performance scholarship, including theater and performance studies, dance studies, music history and criticism, ethnography, new and digital media, cinema studies, and cultural studies; as well as queer, critical race, and post- and decolonial theory. Working with/in this disciplinary hybridity, we explore critiques of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, dis/ability, technology, nation, and capitalism.

Emphasis is mine. That poem seems to connect work of the artists and current events, put work of artists into context. But that is just an opinion.
The shorter answer TL;DR would be that these poems represent unconventional (for Science/Nature/Cell readers) opinion pieces.


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Applying to a tenure track job at the same school two years in a row
I am a postdoc in (applied) math. I have completed one year and have two years left on my contract. I want to stay in academia, so I'm trying to decide whether to apply for tenure track jobs this year. There is one department I am particularly interested in, and it is my understanding that they will be hiring both cycles (although who can be sure?). It seems there are two possibilities:

Apply this year (and next year if rejected)
Apply next year

Obviously my CV will be longer next year, but presumably applications are also judged with some regards to where you are in your career.
What are situations in which applying next year is preferable to applying this year? And does the choice depend much on whether or not the department would reconsider an unsuccessful application the next year (i.e. if I have to apply in just one cycle)?

I know there are a number of questions/answers about when to apply for tenure track jobs, with the overall goal being to land a job somewhere. However, the answers don't seem particularly relevant to the situation of trying to get one a specific job.

Oof. One particular job would be tough. (I'm thinking about math, in the U.S.)

I am in the exactly same situation as you now, and my Ph.D advisor suggested me to give it a try this year. Wish both of us good luck !

You should apply both this year and next year. So many reasons:

The university might decide on not opening the second faculty line. This might happen up to the day before the expected announcement.
You have some control over your CV, but no control over the CVs of your competition. Dr. Superstar might not apply on the 1st year but then apply on the 2nd year.
Luck. Your stars might align on the first year, e.g. they want someone like you, a candidate better than you misses the deadline, your specialty is high on their list this year, but not next year if they hire someone in the area this year (from @John Custer, comments), etc.
You need all of the practice you can get. If you get to the interview stage, even if you don't get the job you'll get valuable experience. There's nothing like a real interview to help you self-assess.
A job now is worth 2 jobs "maybe later."

Your specialty is high on their list this year, and won't be next year if they hire someone in it this year.

Thanks for the response! So is getting rejected the first time not that relevant to the second time? Because some of these points seem predicated on this assumption.

Nobody knows what goes on the mind of the search committee. I just think that the other factors have much more weight.

I'd add that, while your CV might be "richer" next year, so will be the expectations. They will understand you are a recent candidate and will look for "potential".

@overfull hbox The uncertainty/randomness/noise inherent in the hiring process is orders of magnitude larger than whatever negative effect (IF there is any such negative effect...) you might incur in the second year (IF there is a second year...) due to an unsuccessful application in the first year. I'd say getting two opportunities to roll the dice is better than restricting yourself to only one opportunity because you were concerned about a particular scenario where maybe possibly your first dice roll might perhaps negatively influence your potential second roll.

@overfullhbox I'm not in math, and obviously each university is different, but I know in my dept, each hiring committee is different. I've never been on one, so I have no idea if they compare this year's applicants to last year's, but there's a non-zero chance next year's committee even realizes you applied last year if you don't make it onto a short list.

Thanks everyone. It seems that applying now is the overwhelming answer, so I'll give it a shot!!

Since you seem concerned about whether applying the first year will affect the second, I thought I would write an answer addressing that directly: I really don't think you should worry about this.  I mean, I can't completely rule it out, but I think any danger is far outweighed by the advantages.  Certainly, you wouldn't be rejected the second time purely based on the first time; no one would be keeping track, and as people have noted, there's no guarantee that the committee is the same people (usually there will be some overlap, but not exactly the same composition).  It is at least as likely that you'd make a negative impression by not applying since it could be taken as a sign you're not interested in the job.
I think a general theme around the job market is that applicants worry too much about getting rejected over technicalities (since this definitely can happen at some other stages of life).  That's not how hiring committees think.  They want to hire the best person for the job (in their own opinion of course, which is a big caveat), and if they think that you are that person, they aren't going to worry about technicalities.
So, if you want to be hired for a given job, apply for it.  Don't make it any more complicated than that.

Fully agreed, still, I am reminded of an applicant who went out of his way to make a bad impression (he himself clearly believing he was sparkling and charming us all) and lo and behold, he applied the year after, resulting in a collective groan.

@Deipatrous I mean, if you make a terrible impression in person, no amount of strategy about timing is going to help; unless he had gotten a personality transplant in the meantime, waiting a year wouldn’t have helped.

Choosing a person that fits a position is always a combination of two things: the applicant and the position open. The selection comitee is not only "ranking" the applicants, it is also judging how good they will fit in the required position.
Although you are almost the same now and in one year from now, the position may be more adapt to you now than in one year.


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mention new job in cover letter for TT position?
I am currently a postdoc but will begin an industry job in January. I'm applying to some tenure track jobs this cycle, and the timing is such that my application will be submitted while I'm a postdoc but (likely) evaluated while I am at my new position. Should I address this explicitly in my cover letter, and if so, how? I have previously emailed with people on a few of the hiring committees as well, so I could also "unofficially" mention my situation to them.

Unless the job is especially relevant to an academic position, I'd suggest not mentioning it; especially in the cover letter. Make the cover letter all about the new job and your desire and suitability for the position.
People will assume that, because of a break in time, that you will do something to make a living. What that is can be irrelevant. Just be prepared to answer questions when asked.


text:
Ask about political climate at a department during a job interview?
I am on the job market this year, and one of the main things I'm looking for is a good department culture fit. Naturally, the political views of the department and its members plays a role in this, and so I would like to have some idea of the political leanings of the department. However, I'm unclear how much prodding about this is "acceptable" at job interviews? For instance, would it be a bad idea to ask (in a sensitive way) what the department/university response to relevant political happenings has been?

What's "relevant political happenings"? Hamas, or recent changes in state education policy?

‘[W]hat the department/university response to relevant political happenings has been …’ A formal statement on behalf of the department ought to be easy to dig up. If you’re interested in opinions of individuals, just ask them if you need that. In the latter case, how would you do the same thing with neighbors?

I'm not sure this is equivalent to asking neighbors' views (hence the question). In particular, a potential neighbor has no impact on my life if I choose not to live somewhere (and relatively little impact on my life even if I do).

Those are both examples of the type of issues I'm talking about. Other examples would be views on stuff like pronouns, bathrooms, etc. Does it make a difference the specific issue?

" one of the main things I'm looking for is a good department culture fit." you have been on the job market for very short time, then ;)

Very interesting question although it may be more workplace relevant than academy only, although I know that often "Why does Academia:SE give different answers about leaving a bad situation compared to Workplace.SE?" https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/168344/why-does-this-site-give-different-answers-about-leaving-a-bad-situation-compared/168384#168384

@EarlGrey perhaps, but this is maybe as important to me as finding an academic job.

Asking directly about such things is unlikely to be to your advantage - especially if the answers to the questions wouldn't please you. OTOH, those departments that would go all negative aren't likely the ones you want to join in any case. So, if you have options, rather than just wanting to know so that you know how deeply you need to keep your own feelings/attitudes, then ask away. If you get pushback, look elsewhere, though you need to watch out for dissembling as well.
There is another aspect of "political" that you don't raise, but should be aware of and that is whether there are factions in the department that are constantly at war with each other over whatever issue(s) they choose to fight over. This one is harder to get a handle  on in a visit, however. Those issues might be political in the classic sense or related to fields of interest.
Hanging around the coffee room for a day or so can give you a good idea about all such things. How do people talk to one another? What do they talk about. What opinions are expressed on the topics of the day?
In large departments you will find a variety of attitudes. Most places the "average" is a bit more liberal than the general population of that region (some exceptions). In large departments you can likely find some people with views similar to your own and some with different views, even those you find repugnant. Such is life.

This is something you can bring up during more informal parts of a campus visit. I would not bring it up before that time, as the prior screening interview will be quite focused on your qualifications and selling yourself. The more informal parts of a visit are often meals, and this is where you would make inquiries about collegiality, department climate, and the various tensions you mentioned here.
Is it wise to bring it up? In my opinion, if these issues are something that would make you decline a job offer, then you need to know about them directly from the department rather than making assumptions based on what you have access to in the news or online. So it makes sense to ask — in the right way at the right time.

By saying "relevant political happenings", do you mean politics inside the department or global/national politics? If politics is inside the department, you are unlikely to know until you join as a faculty. They will say nice things. If you mean global/national political happenings, people may not be very vocal even though they strongly feel about something, especially at the interview phase. So, it may not be a better idea to ask. Rather than infer indirectly based on their actions, the diversity of faculty, the diversity of students, and some other similar matrices.

There's also intermediate steps. University-wide politics are relevant, and so are state/provincial politics, when those affect funding and policy. In Europe, trans-national EU/ESA/CERN politics also play a role.


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quality standards for joint paper written mostly by mentee
I am increasingly in a position where I am writing papers with students I am mentoring.
Since these projects are primarily meant to expose them to research, I will often have them take the lead on the writing/figure generation/etc.
What I am wondering is to what standard should I hold the presentation quality of their papers?
On the one hand, these are students who are still developing as academic writers, so some (to a lot) of guidance and "hand-holding" is needed to get the papers into a form which is acceptable for submission.
On the other hand, "acceptable" is probably not the standard which most academics have for the writing in their own papers.
However, it seems a bit unreasonable to hold others to same standards I have for my own work; we've all heard stories of advisors who nitpick about things which nobody else seems to care about, and there are certainly things which I personally care about in my own papers (and am happy to spend lots of time on) which I doubt many other researchers even notice. How do I determine a good balance?

I think academics by nature tend to want to perfect everything ... some times "good enough" is OK.

I guess what I'm getting at is how to determine what "good enough" is

What level are these students? Undergraduates? Doctoral Students?

undergrads, but I am interested in both cases

Rough guideline could be that you would recommend acceptance modulo minor revisions if you were the referee?


text:
How much does having competing offers benefit a job search?
Due to personal reasons I have a strong preference to stay in a certain geographic region, and I will apply to all tenure track positions in this region. I would probably prefer to leave academia than take a tenure track job outside this region.
My profile is strong enough I'm confident I would be able to get a R1 tenure track job if I apply broadly, but not strong enough to be confident I will be able to get a job in the region of interest.
I'm wondering whether I should still apply broadly, even for jobs I think I would have a low (but nonzero) chance of taking.
In particular, I have heard:

having one offer may increase the chances of getting another offer
if you have upcoming interviews, you may be able to negotiate a longer time-frame to make a decision on an offer (and my ability to do this would be limited if I only applied to a few local schools)

This makes me think that it would be beneficial to apply broadly and use any potential offers as leverage to get a job I am more interested in. But I'm not sure if this is worth the effort it takes to put together a good application.

Wow, the answers here are so much different from what I would expect from the same question on Workplace. I'll just chime in as a comment. Announcing that you already have another offer, early in the process, can be seen as a negative sign. Think about it. You're basically saying that the later companies weren't high choices and that there is a high chance that their time and resources pursuing you. As Bryan mentioned, having another offer is good for negotiating, and for that, you don't mention the other offer until you are at phase where you wish to apply pressure.

I personally think it's unethical to apply for jobs that you would not take in any circumstance. That type of game-playing is wasting real people's time.
I can't imagine it would ever help you get an offer to have an existing offer. There is certainly correlation in that having an offer means there's something in your application to justify giving you an offer and committees tend to be looking for similar things.
Competing offers help you in the negotiating after you have an offer, though that doesn't mean whoever you're negotiating with necessarily has anything to give, and if you're not actually willing to take the other offer you might end up negotiating yourself into looking like a conniving idiot when you first say you won't take the position unless they match some other offer and then come back with your tail between your legs when they say "sorry we'll have to go with our next choice then".

I agree with most of your answer but I'm not sure about this: I can't imagine it would ever help you get an offer to have an existing offer. It can make you seem more desirable, and put some time pressure on a decision if said school has reason to believe you'd accept over the other offer.  I've seen a couple instances where I think it helped, though I can't be sure whether an offer wouldn't have been made anyway.

This makes sense. I'm not planning on applying anywhere I definitely wouldn't go. But it's a bit hard to calibrate how much effort to put into places I'm not currently super excited about right now but might (or might not) be after a visit. I figured soft factors like I'm asking about might have some impact on the exact balance.

+1 for I personally think it's unethical to apply for jobs that you would not take in any circumstance. That type of game-playing is wasting real people's time.

@Kimball I can see some influence on more discretionary hires for the reasons you give, but faculty searches are normally pretty formalized and not made on a whim. Dan's answer mentions that even if it's a possibility it's at least as likely to go the other way if they'd rather make an offer to someone likely to accept (especially if they're on a time crunch or are worried they'd lose their second choice, too, especially if they grade out similarly).

I don't see a good reason to heap ethical shame upon an OP who is already dealing with the stress of a job search. Lying on a job application is unethical. Bribing a hiring manager is unethical. But seeking out competing offers in order to signal your desirability to a prospective employer is just how the job market works. The notion of "jobs you would not take in any circumstance" is a strawman: You never have complete information about any position (and whether or not you would take it) until you apply and interview.

@Max I'm not "heaping ethical shame", I'm saying it's unethical to waste people's time this way: time of the search committee, time of the other applicants. Search committee members are more or less volunteers, it's a service role that doesn't directly benefit them (there are indirect benefits of picking your colleagues and influencing the field, of course). No strawman here, no, you don't have complete information and aren't required to take a job that is offered, but you shouldn't apply if you already know you won't take it. That's not much of a heap.

"I personally think it's unethical"—this might be a generational thing, but that is quite charged language where I come from. And the idea that search committees are "volunteers" is simply irrelevant. As soon as you "volunteer" for a search committee (which you and I both know is not really optional), reading applications becomes part of your job.

In fact, I'm not certain that "wasting someone's time" is an ethical transgression to begin with. Submitting a paper to a top tier journal, where you are basically certain you won't get published, is arguably "wasting" the editor's time, and might be inadvisable if you are in a rush to publish—but is that unethical?

The strawman is the idea that these are jobs the OP "would not take under any circumstance." OP didn't say that. OP said they have a "strong preference" to remain in this region. Getting these kinds of details right is critical if you are going to call someone "unethical," a term that connotes fraud and abuse, not normal job seeking behavior.

@Max what Bryan said was that it’s unethical to apply for jobs you would not take under any circumstance. You could argue it doesn’t answer OP’s exact question, but I think it’s both a helpful and correct statement. Moreover, OP’s question is worded confusingly and seems to at least implicitly be asking whether it’s ethical to game the hiring process by applying to jobs you are uninterested in in order to gain an advantage w.r.t. other applications, and use the fact that there is a “low but nonzero probability” you would take that job to rationalize that said behavior is in fact ethical.

… so all things considered, I think your criticism of @Bryan’s answer is a bit misguided. It’s a good and helpful answer.

@Max As Dan writes, I'm setting a boundary for what is ethical. That doesn't mean things right up to the boundary on one side are perfect and on the other side of the boundary is Evil. Murder is unethical besides special exceptions; swiping your coworker's paperclips for work purposes without intention of replacing them or informing them is unethical. I'm not equating these in severity, and it doesn't mean I'm calling OP out: it's helpful to know where you are in regards to ethics even if you're on the "okay" side because as you approach the gray area different people will see it differently.

Not always true. In Germany, as a professor, you cannot be promoted or vye for higher salary unless you get an offer elsewhere. So, it very much depends. I didn't downvote, as the answer applies to some areas, but I did not upvote either, as the answer does not apply to some areas.

@CaptainEmacs I would not consider a promotion or higher salary to be a job search in the sense that OP is asking about; higher salary would be included in the statement opening the third paragraph: "Competing offers help you in the negotiating after you have an offer".

having one offer may increase the chances of getting another offer

This is not entirely inconceivable, but it’s also not entirely inconceivable that another job offer might actually deter some departments (particularly departments that are less highly ranked than the department that made you an offer) from making you an offer. Both of those scenarios are in any case fairly unlikely. Serious departments do not usually give much weight to this type of information before making an offer. (Source of my knowledge: former math department chair in the US.)
By contrast, as @BryanKrause said, having multiple offers can very possibly help you negotiate good terms after you have already received an offer.
As far as ethics is concerned, I also agree with @BryanKrause that applying to jobs you are absolutely not interested in is unethical. But beyond ethics, and beyond the fact that it wouldn’t really produce the effect you’re intending, I think it’s a bad idea for multiple reasons having to do with what might happen in various situations where things don’t quite go according to your plan. You risk not just upsetting other people, but possibly upsetting yourself, and setting yourself up for all sorts of dilemmas where you have to weigh competing desires (geography versus career) of yourself and/or family members, in a situation where you are essentially declaring in advance that you specifically want to avoid these types of dilemmas.
To summarize, if you think you might accept a job offer outside of your geographical target zone, then it’s reasonable to apply for such jobs. But if you have already made a decision that you wouldn’t take such a job under any circumstance, you are courting all sorts of unpleasant unintended consequences, and I think your plan is highly inadvisable. (Of course, it’s often the case with unethical behaviors that they invite negative consequences, but somehow in the current situation some of those consequences seem not directly related to the unethical nature of the behavior, so I thought it’s worth pointing out.)
Good luck with your job search in any case.

Thanks for the response. I guess I need to think more about what I want (although I've been trying to do this for the last half decade to little success...). I'm not committed to staying put, I've just enjoyed living here more than anywhere else I've been. I sort of only have one shot at applications, but also I don't want to waste my/committees time on things that won't benefit anyone.

Something else to consider is that interviewing and getting job offers is a skill, which is hard to practice. If you do poorly in a job interview, you can generally reflect on your performance, identify areas of improvement, rehearse better for next time etc. Neither of those helps you if the interview was for the one job you really wanted. So from that angle, applying to other jobs is worthwhile even if just for the interviewing practice (provided you take the interview process seriously).
Another comment suggests that applying for jobs you would never take is wasting people's time and thus unethical, and I don't really disagree. Equally, never is a very long time. You might really like your prospective colleagues, or the campus, or something else about an offer, or simply not get any better offers at all, academia or not. So perhaps it's more that you are unlikely to take these jobs, unless somehow you are surprised by the circumstances. And the only way to find out is to apply, and take the process seriously.

In my own experience, going straight from undergrad in Physics & Computer Science to Software Engineering for government contracts to Software Engineering in the FinTech space; you should be interviewing for companies and positions second on your list before interviewing with those first on your list. Across that decade of experience, I've worked at over five companies, jumping from job to job if the offer was better. Some would say this is morally questionable, but I disagree. Industry, academia, and government are different in ways, but have important similarities. They all have a budget and they all have tactics for exploiting us. It's important to arm yourself in the same way they do. Do you think they're only interviewing a single candidate? Of course not. Why would you exclude yourself from interviewing everywhere you could? Do not fall for the idea that it's morally correct to save yourself for a single employer.
Let's run the scenario: you interview at your second, third, or fourth choice. If the interviews go poorly, good, you got some practice before the real thing. If the interviews go well, good, you might get an offer before your first choice and you can use that as leverage when negotiating for the first choice position, assuming you get to the negotiating table. Finally, you interview at your first choice, and you're armed with the practice rounds you just performed in the weeks prior. This is not "stealing" resources from other companies. You are now simply playing the exact same game as them.


text:
Question about Data analysis
My thesis title is
: Important of user-generated contact in tourism decision making.
I am worried about my methodology. I am not sure what kind of data analysis that can I use.
I will use survey method. In my questionnaire, consist of 4 sections :
Demographic, media habit of visitor, internet behavior of visitor, credibility of source information.
For example, I will ask
-How do you rate the credibility of information from contents created by other users online?
-Would you agree that information from other consumers on Internet is more reliable than advertising?
-What us the most influential source of information when you are about to make a purchase?
-How often do you post contents (rating, comments, picture, video....) on Internet about a purchase.
My questionaire is not Likert Scale.
So far, I only know I can use SPSS to analyse.
But I really no idea at all what should I use to analyse. One type of analysis is enough for thesis?

This is not a good question for this site.

You should ask your supervisor, they're supposed to help you with this kind of question.

Since you are using 'will use' in your question I assume there is still time to make asjustments and will just quickly mention some things that you might still want to change in order your get it 'passed' as your thesis.

You say you do not use a Likert-scale. Why not still change it to a Likert scale? (I will also suggest you use a neutral (midpoint) option for all bipolar scale questions you use)
Another important change to make in your questions is that you are now (judging from the few example questions you posted) biasing your questions by how you formulate the stem. You are doing this atm in two manners (you should change this):

"..on Internet is more reliable than advertising?" should be
something like "..on Internet is more or less reliable than
advertising?"
"Would you agree that.." is likely to lead to acquiescence bias, you can change this to something like "do you think that..".

Getting back to your actual question.
The analysis is dependent on what you wish to 'test' and the 'sort' of data you have.
Most commonly you would have a research hypothesis that is 'tested' by seeing if scores (e.g. averages) on question/construct A are associated with (/'can predict' but not te be confused with causality) differences on question/construct B.
(e.g. you ask people how tall the they are in questions A and what size of pants they wear in question B, to test the hypothesis 'taller people tend to have pants in larger sizes. This would be tested by taking both averages and going for a simple t-test (if the variable would have been categorical for example we would have needed to choose a chi-square test instead)
So the actual test you would choose (e.g. SPSS) depends on this design/hypothesis (or you using 1 variable to predict 1 other variable?) and the datatypes of both the predictor and the dependent variable (nominal, ordinal, ratio etc).
This makes it difficult to answer this question without having a lot more information.
Here is a link to a simple in-browser tool that asks all those question about your research design and variables and rolls out the acceptable significance test (tool).
Hope this helps!


text:
Can I include a Table/Figure which is mentioned on the "discussion" section, after the Conclusion section?
Can I include a Table/Figure which is mentioned on the "discussion" section, after the Conclusion section? I have a large figure, which is causing a big blank gap as I have to put it in a whole page.

This depends on where you want to publish it. But an Appendix/Annex is pretty common.

Discussion conclusion, further work is a common order...

Unless you are submitting to a journal that expects "camera-ready" copy, it doesn't matter. They'll reformat it anyway. Put it where it fits in the narrative, to make life easy for reviewers.


text:
Should I reveal academic misconduct on grad school application?
I am currently applying to grad schools due soon, and on the system I am using to apply to different schools, it asks whether an academic sanction has been levied against me. In my first year of university I did have a sanction levied against me (assignment worth 5%), however, it did not end up on my transcript. I definitely learned from my mistake, and I know the ethical thing is to answer yes, but I do know that the people who review applications have stated that many people who had answered yes, don't always get accepted. As an applicant in Canada (University of Toronto St.George), will schools be able to know if I had an academic sanction levied against me if its not on my transcript? They only require my academic transcript, and letter of references, and from my understanding this may only be on my internal files, which won't be shared without my permission. I had a friend in a similar situation, however, the sanction will remain on their transcript until they graduate, thus they will have to answer yes.
Any help is appreciated
Thank you

I would not call "assignment wort 5%" a "sanction levied". Those words sound too extreme..do they have a precise definition of what an academic sanction is? Good luck!

What sort of answer are you able to give? Just a checkbox for yes/no, or an actual explanation?

Hey guys thanks for your answers! A sanction levies is still technically defined as a 0 on an assignment which I got! It did not really affect my grades, and the prof said it wont be shown on my academic record and only saved on internal filed in the event I repeat another academic offense. The answer I am able to give is a checkboxed yes/now with a short written explanation. The thing is the program I am applying to accepts less than 8% of applicants, I really think checking yes would hurt me.

Update: I talked to my academic office, they said the grad school will only be able to see what is on my transcript since they don't look into internal files when accepting people. So I think I will leave the answer as a no!

So you just did poorly on one assignment? That's not academic misconduct.  Academic misconduct is unethical behavior such as cheating, plagiarism, etc.

@JairTaylor , I committed academic misconduct by copying a solution manual for the 5% assignment, which was considered an academic offence, and thus I received a 0. I should have gave more detail. I didn't do poorly in the class, is what I meant.

There is a difference between academic sanction and academic misconduct. Your question seems to confuse the two. Technically, if the question specifically asks for academic sanction, then according to your definition of a sanction as you say, you do fulfil that criteria and should mark it Yes.
However, the bar for academic misconduct is far higher and this sanction does not seem to fulfil it. Berkeley defines academic misconduct as -

any action or attempted action that may result in creating an unfair academic advantage for oneself or an unfair academic advantage or disadvantage for any other member or members of the academic community

I can't see how you getting a zero and being sanctioned for a 5% assignment would lead to an unfair academic advantage in any way. The intent is to create an unfair advantage even if it is not technically illegal or against the rules. Remember though that college applications are the subject to much publicity in America at the moment, with high profile criminal charges led by the Department of Justice splashed across the media - New York Times article
Canada seems different, as they have a more comprehensive public system and no high profile media cases (not that I know of anyway), so the politics would be different. Such a minor 5% sanction for an assignment would not be gripping stuff. However, if you have to get a notary to sign your grad school application, then that would be a higher bar than if you just tick crossed it online. The legalities are complex and the motivation for the university or justice department to investigate an issue that seems outside the spirit of the law and more of a technicality would likely be minimal. Such a low acceptance rate of 8% will mean any reason to refuse your application would likely be significant. Good luck.


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Cannot submit revision of preprint in bioRxiv (Current Version Status Closed)
I went to the 'Author Area', and the first sign of problem was that the 'Submit a Revision' link had 0 papers. After that, I went to 'Author history', found the specific preprint. I noticed that the table's column 'Current Version Status' had entry 'Closed'. The preprint has 'Date of Original Submission' on September 2017.
Does anyone have any idea what is going on? I've searched in bioRxiv's site and in the web, but no clue of any rules related to closing of preprints to revision after some time since last or initial submission.

I contacted the bioRxiv Team. They replied saying that "The system automatically closes submissions if they are inactive over the allotted period of time. We can have this reopened, but first we need confirmation that your paper has not yet been accepted or published in a journal."
I then asked them "How long is the duration of inactivity leading to closing a preprint for revision, since I couldn't find any specification in bioRxiv's website."
They replied that "The timeline for closing a submission that is in progress is two weeks."
Thing is that I couldn't find any mention in their website about closing to revision after a two-week period of inactivity since initial submission; actually, their FAQ says that "An article posted on bioRxiv can be revised at any time, until it is accepted for publication."

Same problem, and same confusion. But as long as they respond quickly to reopen it, I can't complain!


text:
Does uploading a paper to arxiv with the same title but different author list affect citations?
I have a paper on the arxiv (v1) that I'd like to update to the most recent version (v2).  The author list has expanded since v1.  If I upload v2 with the new authors, will this affect the citations on google scholar or will the citations of v1 just carry over to v2?

The downvoter might want to explain..?

Search results on Google Scholar usually club together citations on different versions of the same article (see screenshot below). Moreover, since Google Scholar works with preprints, and preprint servers like arXiv have options to add or replace author names, in my opinion, this will not affect your citation count. However, make sure that when your paper gets published, the author list is updated in arXiv as well.


text:
Should I retake GRE?
I took the GRE two times, and unfortunately, I could not improve my score on the second attempt. I considered applying with my current GRE score which is 160Q and 140V.(Ps. English is my second language and the verbal part if helpless for me. I do not think that I can improve my verbal score; however, I can make the Quant better.)I am so confused about retaking the GRE a third time. Any suggestions for me?

You've taken it twice with similar results -- why do you think a third attempt will be better?


text:
How/Whether to correct a wrong paper published in a prestigious journal
There are several publications which I was advised to read by my supervisor, and work on during my master thesis. At some point I tried re-deriving the presented statements formally, and found that there are major mistakes that make the publications wrong in a very large part. I have had several people re-derive the same results and arrive at the same conclusions as me since. The issue seems to have started with two publications which used informal (and wrong) logic to argue about the correctness of their main statements. This has been cited over a period of almost a decade and various formalizations and analyses have been done on top of that (including PhD theses) - most of which will turn out to be irrelevant if the results on which those are based are shown to be wrong. A lot of the follow up publications have been published in some of the most prestigious journals in the field.
I tried talking with my supervisor (which is a co-author in some of those) about the issue. Initially he wanted me to find cases in which the statements in the publications hold, however it turns out there are no such cases. Since I notified him of this fact, he has been dodging the issue, even when I suggested that we should at least contact the authors.
How should I proceed with this issue? The publications in question keep being cited and have resulted in even more wrong publications in the last years, as well as wrong conclusions in mainly correct publications.

You don't say which field. In mathematics the answer might be more clear than in, say, philosophy.

@Buffy The mistakes are mathematical. The field is not mathematics however. From what I gathered they tried to fit the theory to the experimental results through informal statements. However, if a formal derivation is done then one arrives at different results. Additionally, the presented results can be expanded, and it may be verified that they result in mathematical nonsense.

Very curious how this one turned out

@SuaveSouris It didn't. I am now with a different supervisor that has more integrity. The wrong papers I mentioned haven't been retracted. There's a follow up paper based on a somewhat correct theory which rectifies things somewhat, but they pretend in it that the previous ones are correct, which is untrue. I will just avoid having anything to do with my master thesis supervisor in the future. When I move far away from this university I may write a review that discusses this in some part, unless I entirely switch fields.

Agh, sorry to hear things soured so

It is hard to tell whether you are on firm or shaky ground. If the ground is firm, probably the best way to approach it is to write a paper yourselves with correct results and see if the same journal will publish it.
But, the ground may be shaky for the following reasons.
In mathematics, a failed proof doesn't leave the result false, just unproven. It gives no evidence for the validity of the claim. A counterexample, on the other hand, leaves the result certainly false. So, it may be that, while an argument fails to deliver, the overall result is still correct, just not provably so.
But a result that is (if true) contradictory to the original, then the original must be false. This is actually stronger than a counterexample, since a counterexample only shows that a general statement is false, but might leave some specialization of it true, provided that the specialization excludes the counterexample.
However, in this case you say that your analysis leads to different results. If those results are contradictory to the original claims, and if your reasoning is correct, then you may have the basis of a paper.
However (again), if your results aren't, in fact, contradictory, then your advisor is giving good advice that you explore the intersection of what it is that the original paper claims and what you claim from your analysis. This might also give you the basis for a good paper, leaving some of the original claims win place, but improving on them.
I suspect that the situation is complex enough that a simple letter to the editor of the journal, pointing out the error, isn't going to be sufficiently compelling for anyone to take action. If the journal in which you find the original is reputable, then many people have missed the errors, implying a certain subtlety. This leads me to suggest that a full paper laying out the situation is more appropriate.
And even if this invalidates some early work of your advisor, he is at an advantage in being part of the process that corrects it.

Maybe it wasn't clear from my comment, but the results are contradictory. Namely the expansion of the expression in their results leads to mathematical nonsense. There is no doubt that what they have is wrong (I have formally derived that it is wrong, and I have had others confirm my results independently).- most importantly, it is semi-trivial to prove that the result is wrong as long as one is acquainted with more advanced mathematical concepts. But as I said my supervisor keeps dodging the topic whenever I bring it up.

Write the paper (outline is probably enough) and show it to the PI. See if he wants to contribute.

I have the derivation in my thesis, he explicitly didn't want me to present the results related to it in the defense, if that tells you something.


text:
Switching into Math/Physics
This is going to be long as I believe that the context is important.
I have always been fairly good at maths and physics (won state wide prizes in the math contests and even won a gold medal in the national physics olympiad.) I live in USA/UK/AUS (trying to hide my identity).
However, after going through grade 12 I got a spot in medicine and happily went along with it because most of my friends were high achievers and I thought why not? I got a fair bit of recognition for getting into medicine (I admit I enjoyed the ego stroking) but luckily medical school is a graduate course (M.D), so I still had undergrad to go. I initially enrolled as a double major - math and physics but within the first week switched to a pre-med track as I thought that it would ease the transition into medicine.
Here's where things take a turn for the worse.
By the end of second year I absolutely hate medicine and I realise that I truly do love maths and physics. I had luckily taken a couple of the first year mathematics modules  - multivariate calculus and intro to linear algebra and two 2nd year course as well - intro to DEs and intro to probability.
So I talk to my course office and beg them to let me transfer into a mathematics track, but I am only able to do courses where I have the prerequisites satisfied  and hence now (end of 3rd year) - have done, in addition to the courses mentioned above, courses on:
nonlinear dynamics, intro to stochastic processes, a modelling course and a course on systems of coupled dynamical systems.
However, my true passion had always been physics and not only have I not done any meaningful university physics, but also haven't learnt a lot of mathematics - analysis, algebra and geometry.
I am thinking of going on to do a masters and try as hard as possible to steer myself back onto the path of physics and mathematics, but I haven't done a lot of the necessary coursework. Furthermore, my family is low income (another factor pushing me into medicine (no parental pressure) but the thought of a good income was tempting) and so I don't think I can afford to take a couple years to essentially redo a bachelor's degree.
My question is: am I screwed? I am more than willing, and passionate, to learn these subjects by myself - through books. In fact that's how I've learnt most of the things I have to date. But I realise that universities want to see another university giving a student their stamp of approval saying - this student has successfully learnt (insert subject.) I truly believe most of the time these stamps are meaningless, but in the case of admissions it truly is everything.
Please help, any advice is much appreciated.

https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/99/personal-advices-instead-of-general-questions-means-low-reusability, https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1093/time-to-expressly-ban-i-want-to-do-x-heres-my-life-story-questions

Without knowing where you are it is a bit difficult to offer you possibilities. The postgraduate scene in the US is different from in the UK and elsewhere. In the UK you might find that a 1 year "taught" masters degree in physics on top of what I think you are saying will end up being a mathematics undergrad w/ pre-med on top of it (?), coupled with your willingness to study outside of course requirements would bring you up to speed enough to move to doctoral study. In NZ and (maybe?) OZ you may be able to convince your Uni to let you do an honours year in physics before moving to a masters

@Poidah I think you need to read the poster's question more carefully. They are not unsatisfied with mathematics at all, rather for clear reasons they accepted a pre-med place, but have found medicine is not right for them. They have not changed courses "so often", but appear to have only changed once after the realised they were on the wrong career path for them.

It is totally implausible that this question was written by an American student.

I voted to close because this is a rant, not a question.  Your course office will have told you what to do; we will not know more than they do.

Sorry, I am not familiar with a combined maths and physics masters,  those are less common in my system. So I assumed the post was a discussion about changing to a physics masters. So now the frustration seems to be about what the entry and course requirements are, which seems a silly thing to be venting to this group about and wasting our time. Every institution would have a different requirements...

@AnonymousPhysicist  'State-wide' and 'Grade 12' aren't phrases that fit with coming from the UK either.

Also, medicine is usually studied as an undergraduate degree in the UK.

@astronat ... and a MD is a higher degree in the UK, akin to a PhD elsewhere.

@AnonymousPhysicist Granted, the tone of the post could stand to be adjusted by trimming out the emotional phrasing. However, the questions that are raised show a serious interest by the OP to seek help to make an informed decision. I hear these types of pleas all too often from undergraduate students. They are not addressed by (dismissive) responses akin to "go figure it out on your own from what your course office tells you". The course office is a valuable resource of information for sure. It is however not a council for sage advice, which is what the OP is earnestly seeking.

@JeffreyJWeimer I disagree.  The asker has already decided what they want.

one small comment about money. You might be straped for cash even if you get in a master's / phd program as those 3 countries you named don't usually pay a decent amount for graduate students. Although any kind of pay you will receive will probably ease of the burden those funds (I believe) is mostly reserved for phds. You may consider "cheaper to live" countries. I have heard they were short of good grad. students in Budapest, and life there would be significantly cheaper than in UK.

Maybe you could head for something a little in between like chemical physics or biophysics or chem engineering where some of the courses to date are useful?
My advice is to push for getting your 4 year degree (assuming US) on time.  Just see bad things when people delay too much from the switching.  If you can switch majors while still getting done on time, fine.  Otherwise, do some masters or the like.  Perhaps after working.
You have the wrong idea about the math needed for physics. Analysis (as opposed to "calculus"), algebra (of the abstract sort), and advanced geometry are all really pretty marginal for someone working on undergrad 'zoics.  Read up on Feynman or just talk to physicists (not math types).  You need to be very strong at calculus, high school algebra, and ODEs/PDES.  That's probably your biggest gap right now--diffyQs.  NOT the more theoretical math courses that people talk about on the Internetz.
Getting through a "math methods" book would be good.  If you learn this book from start to finish, that will put you in great stead:  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005G14K86/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0 (get a used earlier editions, don't spend $100, I have the 5th.)  Many physicists like Mary Boas (little easier but similar).  The traditional math methods for physics is Arfken Weber, but while it has a few harder topics, it's really a miserable grabbag and doesn't teach well.  I like Kryezing better for self study.)
Finally, I would caution you on the income aspect of physics (or math).  Unless you are a real superstar (which can be rare), you will face huge competition for academic jobs.  These forums are littered with people struggling to find jobs or unhappy with their advisor situation (and the relative subservience required in Ph.D. relationship).  Getting a certified job like a physician is a great move financially and in terms of societal prestige.

Starting Point
First, I would advise someone in your situation to work the puzzle backward for different cases.
Switch Degrees
Take the course requirements for the physics and math undergraduate degrees. Take your current transcript. Start backward from the senior year of the physics or math degree. Develop the sequence of courses that you need. Track backward until you hit the overlap between what you need and what you have. Fill in the blanks with the courses that are pre-requisites to a physics or math degree that you do not have. At that point, take a course schedule from the university where you are. Design your schedule going forward to switch to either physics or math. Determine the minimum additional time you would need to complete either degree. As best possible, include that you will take courses during a summer semester to make up what you lack. At the end, you will have a complete schedule for your current degree, supposedly to be complete in one more year, as well as complete schedules for switching to either physics or math, to be completed in Np or Nm additional years.
Go on to an MS Degree
Research the course offerings for an MS in physics or math. Pay particular attention to the senior-level undergraduate pre-requisite requirements for the first year courses. List their equivalents from your current university. By example, a graduate course in solid state physics will likely require math through partial differential equations as an explicit or implicit pre-requisite. Some graduate programs do the favor of listing a set of required transition courses for students who enter the graduate program from an undergraduate program that is not the same. When in doubt, find the equivalent graduate course at your university, find out who teaches that course, and go have a talk with that instructor to get the information you need. At the end you will have a list of senior-level undergraduate courses that you must have for an MS degree in either physics or math. Presume that you continue with your current degree to complete it in one year. Now repeat the exercise to track how long in time you will need just to take make-up courses in senior-level prerequisites.
Comparative Analysis

Based on what you have learned, which approach do you prefer? Suppose that all paths above require you to take one additional year beyond your current undergraduate degree. Which track is more appealing in its course list? Suppose all paths require the same or nearly the same types of courses. Which track is more appealing because it takes (or appears to take) less time?
Based on what you have learned, are any of the paths eliminated? Perhaps you cannot afford to take Np or Nm more years/semesters of courses. Perhaps you do not want to take partial differential equations ever at all.

You can do this comparative analysis for any other degree program (chemistry, biomedical engineering, biophysical sciences, ...). It will give you a grounding in what you face as a minimum and what you are unwilling to do as a rule.
Other Insights
I would not advise anyone in your situation who decides to pursue a graduate degree in a different program than their undergraduate degree to believe with any seriousness that they can simply make up courses that they lack just by reading on their own. You will be in competition with graduate students who know the undergraduate material backwards and forwards through rigorous training. You must have that a comparable level of confidence going in to a different graduate degree or you will more likely fail in your first year.
The reason that graduate programs require student applicants to validate certain pre-requisite information through official coursework rather than through a "read on your own" approach is to avoid that you will otherwise most likely fail in your first year courses.
The best advice you can get to help you make plans to continue to graduate school will come from faculty who are in the program where you want to move, who teach the first year graduate courses, and who advise students in research. Find them at your university. Go talk to them.


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Length of a Dissertation Summary for a Postdoc job
For a job application I am currently putting together, they request a document of Dissertation Summary and Other Recent Scholarly Endeavors where I need to, of course, "Summarize your dissertation and other recent scholarly endeavors."
The application page says this is to be a maximum length of 3 pages (excluding references). However, much of what I am finding online says that dissertation summaries should be pretty brief.
What is the typical length of a dissertation summary?

In my uni we would call this a research statement. It is common to most job ads.

Why does typical matter? You have three pages. You may need it or not.
Don't say more than you need to, but give an explanation that the readers can relate to.
My dissertation, which was very involved and quite long could be described (to an expert) in a couple of paragraphs - and they would have been impressed. But other topics would take more explanation than mine did in mathematics.
But, as they imply you may have more to say about other recent scholarly matters - work in progress, for example.


text:
Is the distinction between qualitative and quantitative methodology still significant today?
Some scholarly articles explain in detail the epistemological and ontological differences of the two methods, while some argue that the distinction between them is now blurred. I try to reconcile this inconsistency by thinking that quantitative and qualitative traditions form a methodological spectrum, where pure quantitative and qualitative approaches are situated at the opposing extremes, while mixed-methods are at the middle.
Is the distinction between the research traditions still significant? And if yes, do social scientists promote a "methodological spectrum" or do they still deny the compatibility of the two?

I am not happy with the wording of the question, but I think it can be easily answered: A closer look at for example sociological associations reveals that the differentiation is still relevant: ASA methodology section deals only with quantitative methods and ESA has separated research networks for qualitative and quantitative mehtods. Despite the establishment of mixed methods research, there are still crucial divides between epistemic communities.

You'll find today that more and more social scientists are using 'mixed methods.'
As for your question about the significance in difference, I think this is rather subjective and dependent on the school/field. In sociology for example, health research has a tendency to be more involved with stats and quantitative methods, while research in gender has a tendency to be much more qualitative.
As jakebeal suggests, no method is superior to the other, it really depends on what you are looking for and various methods will be ideal for various phenomena.
Personally, I am a firm believer in mixed methods, especially when exploring social issues. I find that purely quantitative approaches only give the numbers, but don't adequately explain the reasoning behind said numbers nor provide enough direction in how these numbers can be rectified. Adding in that qualitative aspect can be helpful to provide a much more rounded and holistic account of what's occurring.

In nearly every scientific field you will find that some investigations are more heavily quantitative while others are quite qualitative in nature.  I find that the difference tends to be that qualitative investigations are more exploratory, observing a phenomenon in its natural conditions to establish that it really exists or to gather case-study sorts of information, while quantitative investigations are more aiming at firmly establishing an explanatory model.  The boundaries, however, are quite incremental and blurry, and I'm not quite sure what the value is of trying to draw a distinction, rather than simply saying: "this is the mixture of methods that can best study these phenomena at present."
Thus, while I don't know what the current vogue in theory of science is, I would be startled if it did not include a spectrum.

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


text:
What other academic disciplines aside from literature can a writer who hates mathematics specialize in?
Almost every discipline in humanities and science requires some level of math. It seems to me that math majors can specialize in any field they like, while people who are good with words are stuck with editorial or journalistic jobs. I’m not trying to make an unwarranted dichotomy between linguistic intelligence and mathematical intelligence. I’m quite sure that mathematicians are good with words too; otherwise they won’t be able to explain their ideas in a persuasive and elegant manner. What I’m trying to say is that many writers are just not interested in math, to say the least. But I don’t think this should hinder them from studying our world the way scientists do. Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, which are by far the most mathematical disciplines, may not be for someone who loves words but hates math. But there must be some other objective disciplines (maybe in the social sciences or law) that a writer can specialize in.

You would be surprised to discover how many accomplished physicists, biologists  and chemists have relatively poor mathematical background and abilities.

What do you mean by "math"?  Are you averse to pretty much everything where you see a number, or do you just not want to spend all day immersed in abstruse alien symbology?

The problem is that if you want to be objective, you usually have to present hard numbers. Which means that at a bare minimum you need to know some very basic statistical analysis to determine if your numbers are actually interesting. (To be nitpicky: this is calculations, not math. Everyone can learn to do calculations, there is no special "mathematical intelligence" needed. Not everyone can be Paul Erdős. Anyone can learn to carry out a t-test with the help of a computer.)
As a mathematician in academia, I can't afford to say that writing is boring or teaching is boring. It's a part of my job, and if I don't enjoy it, I shouldn't be in academia. You seem to want to work in a "hard" discipline, but without dealing with the numbers that make it "hard". The world doesn't work like that.
Mathematicians in general might not be good at writing, but the ones that are also successful at communicating their ideas and hence successful academics most definitely are good at writing. They didn't write annoyed posts online about how it's unfair that people don't just understand what the meant: they spent some time and learned it. A mathematician who wants to be an academic has to learn to communicate efficiently. A writer who wants to study our world like a scientist has to learn to use the main tool scientists use: math. If the write is not interested in math, maybe they should reconsider going in to a scientific field. It's like a scientist saying that they want to be a writer, but they don't want to deal with pens or keyboards. Science without math is no longer science.
I'm only starting out as a grad student, but one of the things I've learned about academia, and one of the reasons I wanted to be in academia in the first place is that it's an extremely demanding, varied job. A good academic is excellent at doing research in their area, and then very good at other things. These other things may include writing, teaching, mentoring students, coding, and analysing data, depending on their field. (Interestingly enough, I think the only field where you can get away without doing any data analysis ever is math. I did a poll in my office, and only 4 out of 40 grad students in math could carry out a t-test off the top of their head). You can't just pick a single thing to be good at: you need the whole package. That includes some math skills if you want to work in an objective discipline. Suck it up and learn some math. Math is great.

"Not everyone can be Paul Erdős. Anyone can learn to carry out a t-test with the help of a computer." Nice.

Your question answers itself in the last sentence: law and the social sciences could be a good fit.  Of course you should probably stay away from tax law if you want to avoid mathematics entirely, but most legal studies don't involve mathematics.  Quantitative work in the social sciences involves statistics, but there's plenty of qualitative work (e.g., based on ethnographic methods).  And I don't believe your assertion that mathematics is widespread in the humanities.  What about history, for example?  Mathematical techniques in the humanities are the exception, not the rule.
There's no way to make a comprehensive list of topics that don't involve mathematics.  If you're considering your future academic career and worried about the prevalence of mathematics, you could address this fear by looking over the books or papers of potential advisors.  Someone who uses lots of statistics or formal mathematical models wouldn't be a good choice if you don't like that approach.  If you can't find anybody who takes a qualitative approach to the topics you are interested in, then you're looking at the wrong department or wrong field for you.  If you can, then you have a potential path forwards.
But let me put in a plug for learning a little statistics.  If you avoid statistics because you don't understand it, then that will limit the scope of your work.  If you avoid it because you don't like it, but you can handle it when necessary, then you'll have more flexibility and freedom.  (And in practice I've talked with many more people who regret not having studied statistics than people who regret having wasted time studying it.)

Modern Philosophy requires an understanding of mathematical logic and decision making. It might be one of the most mathematically dependent humanity.

OK, that's a reasonable point and I'll remove philosophy.  I believe most philosophers never use any mathematical logic in their work, but they still have to study a little logic.  (For example, I just checked that in the Princeton and Harvard Ph.D. programs, you can get away with never taking a graduate course in logic, but you have to take at least an undergraduate course, so there's no way to get a philosophy Ph.D. in those programs without taking one pretty mathy course.)

Law is (at least in principle) all about formal logical arguments.  Math can almost be defined as the study of formal logical arguments.  You might avoid numbers by going into law, but you definitely aren't going to avoid "math".

Law may be similar in spirit to mathematics in that sense, but studying law in the U.S. requires no formal study of mathematics beyond whatever minimum is required to graduate from college, and plenty of lawyers have no interest in or knowledge of mathematics beyond that. (And, although I'm not a lawyer, I'd argue that legal arguments feel very different from mathematics. Lawyers almost never attempt to formalize rigorous proofs the way mathematicians do, and there's a huge role for concepts like precedents or what a reasonable person would conclude, which play no role in formal mathematics.)

Yes, the one time I got semi-involved in a legal case (as a "statistical expert"), I was surprised at how handwavy all the lawyering was.

@AnonymousMathematician Anecdotal evidence from a parent who is a lawyer suggests that math is not an uncommon background in law, and that understanding and being comfortable with logical arguments is one of the most important requirements (also, the LSAT is pretty much "are you good at logical reasoning"). It depends somewhat on the type of law, but you aren't avoiding formal logical arguments by going into that field.

This probably isn't the answer you're hoping for, but hear me out. As a scientist with a healthy interest in the humanities, I think it's a bad idea to limit yourself from vocations that remotely involve math. You would be surprised how little mathematics (read: work) is needed to have a relatively good understanding of the physical world.
As such, highly recommend for you to check out the book: A Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley. It is written by a linguist who hated mathematics and science until she decided to give it a fresh shot in adulthood. Don't fear, it doesn't aim to make you a theoretical physicist or a mathematician.
The world is only going to continue becoming more scientific minded, and in my opinion, it'd be good for a writer to plan for that direction :)
Good luck !

As a social scientist my academic research is generally mostly qualitative and in social sciences such as socio-cultural anthropology and qualitative sociology, you can get away with doing 0% math.
However, I also complete pro-bono/paid contracts for applied social research, in which some basic quantitative skills (math) are required. I have no experience in working with large data sets or 'big data' but I know enough to conduct small-scale surveys and build on these with qualitative analysis. Currently, one of the projects I recently completed is being turned into a journal article, where my co-author will be helping out with the math portion (survey results).
Really, the only profession other than writing novels/literature that I can see a 100% absence of math would be something like visual art, and even then, there's a 'kind' of math involved in understanding how to use different materials (such as painting/mixing with other types of chemicals such as oils etc). Even music and dance are highly reliant on a form of math.
I have a dyscalculia which is a learning disorder around math and numbers, so I can 100% empathise with a hatred for the subject. I quadruple check all equations etc and have a really good handle on excel to calculate things for me and get my partner to check for me as well, whose pretty good at math.
But I'm not letting this disorder get to me, and I use math constantly for marking, my research and so on, I just don't specialise in that area. The minute a project calls for a high level of stats/data/quant, I get someone else involved.
As others have said, math is everywhere and you can't get away from math, but sometimes it can be helpful and doesn't require intense equations or the like. Just having a basic handle on it is enough in many disciplines!

While it is understandable that you would not want to work with hardcore maths if you don't like the subject, I think you need to get over the mental block that you cannot handle anything even remotely connected to mathematics. Most humanities subjects, apart from economics, geography, geology, or modern philosophy would not require a high level of mathematical application. Subjects within the social sciences, such as sociology, history, politics, etc. might work well for someone who can write well but not want to study mathematics. However, if you completely shut yourself off the moment you see even a simple calculation, your choice of subject might become very restricted.

If you hate math but you're a good writer, you could write good books about why math is hateful, for other people who hate math.  Many people hate math already, so many in fact that you could find yourself tapping a great untapped market.

Does it actually answer the question?  The question asked for academic disciplines people who don't like math can specialize in, and I wouldn't say writing books about the hatefulness of math is an academic discipline.

I think it's implicit in my response that I'm advising him to choose a discipline in the humanities, while the explicit part of my response suggests a possible career.

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Are there any databases for PhD dissertations?
I just know ProQuest which supplies some PhD dissertations. However, it's hard to find some the dissertations of French and German.
So are there any other good databases for dissertations of French, German, UK, USA? Any answer is encouraged.

Closely related question: Worldwide Dissertation Database? or French, German, Italian ones?

For French dissertations, you have theses.fr which lists both the on-going and defended thesis since 1985 in France.
Note that there may be dissertations that are not available online but are of public access in the university libraries. Also, most of the theses are written in French (~270k in French, and ~23k in English), so you will probably need decent French skills if you find a thesis that matches your interests.

For theses defended in the UK, Ethos is the way to go: ethos.bl.uk/
It's a service provided by the British Library. Many theses can be downloaded for free, and many others can be requested and they will scan them for a fee.


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What to do with a new mathematics conjecture?
I have been working on a problem (not in mathematics) for a while and at the core there is a simply stated mathematical problem which I really cannot solve.  I have tried asking colleagues but they can't either. As far as I can tell it is not equivalent to some known problem either.
I am not myself a professional mathematician so I see no prospect of my being able to solve it.  However I would love to know if it is true or not. Is there some forum to place non-trivial simply stated mathematical conjectures?  Or should I just put the whole paper on the arXiv and forget it?

If you want to publish it, please see this question http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/2375/546

However, I definitely agree with @Riccardo, ask it on Math SE or Mathoverflow.

@scaaahu Thank you. The question is what to do after no useful answer comes from that ?  I suppose I am looking for an "open problems" list somewhere I can contribute to.  Or did you mean ask the question I posed here and not the technical math question?

I think you can worry about open problem list after you ask it on Math SE/Mathoverflow.

@notamathmo: unfortunately an "open problems" list would in principle include pretty much everything of any interest that any mathematician is working on anywhere in the world. So, not really surveyable in the way that your todo list is even on a bad day ;-)

"Is there some forum to place non-trivial simply stated mathematical conjectures?"  As far as I know , http://math.stackexchange.com can be a good place where to start.
If the methods required turn out to be more sophisticated, you can try asking on http://mathoverflow.net .
I am almost sure that on these sites you'll receive the right advices for your mathematical question

Thank you. I should perhaps have said that I did think of those. I have done a lot of research and am sure the problem is not trivial.  Are those places not more suited to problems with quick solutions?

@notamathmo Mathoverflow is for research level problems, so no.

No offence intended, but if you are not a professional mathematician there are reasonable chances that your problem is an easy one for a professional, or at least one that has been studied already and for which partial solutions and a developed theory exist. The first thing to do in my opinion is asking a mathematician (either on math.se or in person).

@FedericoPoloni I had assumed that "I have tried asking colleagues but they can't either. " might have meant he/she asked some colleague mathematicians.

+1, this is what the sites math.SE and mathoverflow are for.  @dorothy: if one is not working in a subject, then one usually doesn't even know who to ask.  If I had a chemistry question, then (i) I would surely phrase it in a nonstandard way even if it were really standard and (ii) I wouldn't know who to ask, other than "some chemist".  If the OP's question is one that many mathematicians know the answer to quickly but not all mathematicians, asking on these sites will be very helpful.

In fact, to believe that something is really not known / easy / standard, one has to hear from a few experts in the field that they don't know how to answer it.  That I don't know the answer to someone's question can be helpful information to them (and even what they want to hear, sometimes).  But there's a big difference between "I don't know, but ask her" and "I'm the one who would know, and I don't", and I think an outsider to a field has no way to make these kind of evaluations.

@PeteL.Clark You make good points. I do wonder if mathoverflow+math.stackexchange has a broad enough coverage of professional mathematicians to really achieve this. mathoverflow certainly covers some topics very well (number theory+pure maths) but seems to have much less coverage for others. It's a good place to start however, I agree.


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Cover letter for mid-career application in mathematics
I am in my seventh year after my PhD, and am applying from a tenure-track position in Mathematics.  I am working with a job coach, who is suggesting a 2.5 page cover letter for tenure-track mathematics positions.  This seems long to me, I always thought that in math 1 page was max, but are the rules different when applying mid-career?

This sounds ridiculous. Is this job coach a mathematician? Cover letters in math hiring (at least in the US) are an anachronism, I would find it extremely strange to see one that’s more than 2-3 paragraphs long.

Which country is this and what does the job announcement ask for?

As someone who has chaired several search committees in the last five years, I can tell you that there's very little chance that I'd read a cover letter that was longer than 2 pages long. I've got hundreds of applications to read on mathjobs.org, so there just isn't time for this.
The cover paper can be helpful in explaining why you're particularly interested in our position (a spouse working in a nearby city, family who live in the region, interest in research collaboration with faculty in other departments.)  It shouldn't take more than a couple of paragraphs to explain that kind of stuff.
You will have a separate CV, research statement, and teaching statement, so those aspects of your application don't belong in your cover letter.
What is your coach suggesting you put into this 2-3 page long cover letter?


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PhD (at Oxford) vs staying at in the industry (Facebook) for a ML student?
I am 26 years old and I got an offer for a PhD in Machine Learning at Oxford. However, currently I am a software engineer at Facebook and I am living a very well-off lifestyle.
I applied for the PhD last year, not knowing if I would get it and I decided to work as a back up. Now that I have a great paying job it is hard for me to want to do the PhD even with the scholarship. However, I know the work I can get after completing a PhD at Oxford is much more interesting to me (my work is currently not very interesting) and I could be making more than I am now.
My question is: will it be worth it do take 3-4 years to do that PhD (and graduate around 30) or should I just stay at Facebook even though the job is not very interesting for me.

Why a PhD degree?  is it to change career, or your company requires it, prestige of the university or you can move further up in the industry, etc?   If you want to learn something interesting, you can always do it without a degree.  A PhD trains you to do research as opposed to teach you specific ML techniques, which you need to learn by yourself anyway. If you love software development, and given that the industry changes so quick, you are unlikely to go back to where you were.

You must make this decision - no one else can make it for you. Things to think about:

Uninteresting jobs are bad. If you can't see your job getting more interesting, then say 5-10 years down the line there's a good chance you'll get so bored your performance starts suffering, and then you might get fired.
You know the industry very well since you have a first-hand insider view. What jobs do you enable by getting a PhD? If they're more interesting jobs (do you actually know they're more interesting, or do you just think they're more interesting?) that you will never be able to do without a PhD, that's a powerful reason to get a PhD. On the other hand, it's conceivable that you'll be able to do those jobs without a PhD simply by staying put, acquiring more experience, and doing well. You'll know better than anyone else.
Do you have a significant other or a family to provide for? If so, what do they think? Remember that usually, once people experience a luxury, going back to a less-luxurious lifestyle is typically a big no-no even if it was previously acceptable. Even if you can accept it, your significant other / dependents might not.
What does your current manager or other senior colleague think (if you trust them enough to talk to them)? Just as important, are they willing to rehire you after you graduate?
Is it actually economically better to do a PhD? Run some calculations. If you stay put, you earn $X this year, $X + [increment] next year (if you have one), etc. If you go to Oxford, you earn $Y for 3 years where Y < X, but then after 3 years you earn $Z where Z > X. How many years does it take before the second option exceeds the first, if it exceeds the first at all? The fewer years this takes, the more attractive the PhD becomes.

These things are too intricate to say more, unfortunately. As above, you must make the decision - no one else can make it for you.

Stay at the industry (I'm an IT person and I do have a PHD). At least until you have enough savings to be able to pay for the PHD and all your expenses for 4 years straight up without working.
Your job may not be as interesting now but you can slowly transition, learn or specialize in what interests you, meanwhile a PHD only teaches you how to bull 4 essays in less than 1 week, cite in APA and describe stuff. You could have the cure for all types of cancers but to academia it is useless unless you get into the paper publishing game of writing useless theoretical frames explaining where the word cancer came from and who researched that word before even explaining whats the cure. (Just saying this will hurt a bunch of sensibilities. Expect many downvotes)
Plus a 3-4 years PHD is already out of question for the demands of the modern world. 2 years is the average now. The option of working and doing a PHD simultaneously is hellish for your health (among my PHD generation I ended up with column and sciatica problems, a friend got facial paralysis, there were divorces, loss of jobs, ulcels, a mental crisis...etc. And that IS sadly normal.) Oh! and to get some scholarships normally you are required to be a full-time student, so you cant even work if you want the scholarship.
Besides, you can do a PHD at any age; while getting up on your career and good money becomes difficult with age. Plus you lose on retirement savings.
In sum, unless you wish and plan to enter academia as a full-time professor or researcher I would recommend you to skip on the PHD for now or analyze better your life plans before choosing.  Think why would you really want to do a PHD.

There is a lot of false information in this answer

"useless theoretical frames" big oof

@jmite which  would you claim to be false and why? what is your evidence or argued counterpoints?

@Azor Ahai . As you can see, the answer to OPs questions seeks to state the reality of a PHD, not to stroke academic egos and sensitivities.

Ah, the good old, "people disagree with me because I hurt their feelings, not because I'm totally wrong!" defense

@Azor Ahai If you disagree be professional and present your arguments on why you disagree and present evidence to back them up so OP and the community can get added data that improves the answer.

@deags That would imply there was a worthwhile argument presented.

@Azor Ahai  Quite so for you given your disposition to answer and bother downvoting, albeit, probably an irrational one given the lack of clarifications or contributions to the answer.