text:
What should I do if a professor's grading makes me feel bad?
I have a professor who grades all his exams by himself (homework, midterm and probably the final). For whatever reason he seems to be a likeable guy during the lecture but he absolutely "wrecks" the homeworks, etc. when he grades.
For example, if you make a little error he will put a huge X across the page or over the entire question. Absolutely massive. And sometimes he will circle a solution or step he does not understand and write ??????????? in red. Finally, this didn't happen to me but happened to a class mate of mine, he wrote "fail" on a question that had some problems with the solution. Now I remember he put "big problem" on one of my answers, taking out all marks, without further comment.
Also he sometimes do not thoroughly read through a question but just marks it wrong, then he changes the marking a few moments later i.e. he will write a huge X over the entire question and put a minus whatever the total points and then scratch out his reading mistake but leaves the huge X there. His marking is also uneven, sometimes he will put -5 for a question and then for whatever reason scratchs it out with a red pen and put -10.

(picture this, but imagine that the X is over your entire answer)
Honestly, I find that not just homeworks, but also emails. I think he has a way of overreacting to any little thing he doesn't see fit. For example, I asked him a simple question I had regarding some reference I found online which disagreed with his lecture. He said I need to review basic "insert course name here" because everything I said to him is totally wrong. Then I emailed him back telling him that the claim was contained in the link, by another professor. He just replied I should write my emails more clearly next time...what a guy.
By the way he never clarified that issue I emailed him about, which I think he believes is trivial and only tangetial to the course (he tends to cover only portions of his sum total lectures), but a question is a question even if it is not on the exam, isn't it?
Is his behavior reasonable? It just feels like he is on this power trip whenever he grades stuff. I am scared to approach him because I feel like he marked one of my question wrong after he wrote a huge X and probably discontinued to read my solution which was written on the back of the exam. What should I do?

Sounds like a busy and distracted professor, which is most of them.  You should think about what you can do to learn better and not worry too much about what other people do or think.

(+1) Philosophically your answer "LOVE" is awesome.

"I have a professor who grades all his exams by himself": This is quite the norm in my country.

I might take the "??" as a sign of frustration. If that "love" answer actually is yours, he is probably frustrated that you're not taking the course seriously. Also, "??" is often a shortcut for "I have no idea what this is so I can't point out where you went wrong" – but if he really did write ten question marks then that's a bit over the top.

Trust me -- from the faculty perspective we are anything but giddy with power as we grade exams. Your professor may be grading hastily, but power-tripping is the least likely hypothesis I can think of for the size of his X's or the number of question marks he uses.

One other comment. A few years ago the center-for-teaching people told us to use green pen rather than red when marking exams so as to avoid hurting students' feelings. I found this one of the most ridiculous things I'd heard from a university administrator -- a high bar indeed. You've persuaded me that I was naive. I'm buying a pack of green pens tomorrow.

The professor is your boss right now. if he tells you you did something wrong, do it right next time. If you don't know what right is, ask him.

Math is about being precise. as in ridiculous precise. One day, you will probably be thankful for this, and consider it one of the best classes ever, because he taught you the one most essential principle of mathematics: an error early on may kills your entire proof, no matter how beautiful it is afterwards.

@Corvus:  I, too, was told not to use red ink.  I, too, thought it ridiculous, but it was the dean who told me.  I now grade with brown ink.  If asked whether I'm being cute, I explain it's the blood of students who asked whether I was being cute.

I would recommend approaching this by thinking about the following question: what is your goal in receiving grades?
Some things that we commonly do with the grades that we receive are:

Use them as feedback on our strengths and weaknesses in understanding material
Certify our degree of education, thereby obtaining further opportunities
Obtain personal validation from good grades

It sounds to me like you're focusing primarily on the personal validation that you can receive from the professor.  Otherwise, it would be the marks you receive that matter, rather than the size of the X used to mark them.  I would suggest that you instead focus on the more concrete gains that you can obtain from the class, whether intellectual (point #1) or material (point #2).
In that light, the style of markings does not matter, but the precision of his grading does.  When you are concerned that he has not graded you correctly, go to office hours and seek understanding of the reason for a grade.  Perhaps he is being sloppy, or perhaps not---but if you approach him with an entitled attitude such as you are showing in your question here, you are unlikely to obtain the information that you desire.

+1 The fact that the professor adjusts grades (e.g. changes -5 to -10) suggests some degree of care - a really sloppy grader might not bother to rethink stuff he's already put down a grade for.

@ff524 It was halfway through grading my first quiz the first time I graded anything that I learned it is wise to not grade or mark in haste. I would say someone with presumably a lot of experience in grading who frequently changes the marks they have made while grading might actually indicate a more sloppy grader, as opposed to less. If it weren't for the e-mail portion of the question I would have commented that it could be a student grader, in fact.

@ToddWilcox I don't think changing a grade necessarily means "marking in haste."

@ff524 It seems relatively hastier than carefully reading the entire answer, or even the entire test/quiz, even better reading through all the tests/quizzes before making any marks on any one quiz, which is what I decided to do in order to make sure I was grading fairly across the board. So I guess "haste" is relative and/or in the eye of the beholder.

You will find that your future is filled with busy people who will read what you write as quickly and with as little preparation and attention as they possibly can.  If what you write is not immediately, transparently clear, your words will be filed in the "get back to this if there is ever time" pile.  (Spoiler:  there is never time.)  This has consequences:

Say what you mean.
Mean what you say.
Get to the point.
If there is a standard way to say what you are saying, say it in the standard way.  The mental cost of parsing standard forms is much lower than parsing novel forms.
Produce valid sentences.  The mental cost of parsing malformed sentences is much higher than that of parsing valid sentences.  (Example of a malformed sentence: refusing to put equals signs between a sequence of equal things.  As a result, that sentence no verb.)

Let's express the same idea in terms of grading:  The grader reads through your answer until they can no longer see how you are making progress towards a solution.  Based on the fraction of the (or a) correct solution you have produced by the time the grader aborts their attempt to make sense of your answer, a grade is assigned.  The more harried the grader is, the less hard they will attempt to overcome deficiencies in your answer.  The same five points apply.  Unless the class actually is Creative Writing, the grader will not absorb and reflect on your answers; if they don't see that what you are writing is correct, it's wrong.
Let me tell you a story:  I teach math.  I have a one page "How To Write [subject]" that I provide every semester.  It contains useful advice:  "1. Draw a picture.  2.  Label the picture.  3.  Write top-to-bottom, left-to-write. ..."  When I share this with my friends that teach at other Universities, they cannot stop laughing.  "You have to tell them to write top-to-bottom, left-to-write?"  Yes.  Mysteriously, there are students in college who have not yet noticed that all of the long form textual information they read is in the same format, so they write their math in small islands randomly scattered on the page.  If I had infinite time, I would go to the trouble of figuring out what order their answer is to be read and piece together whatever argument they were trying to make.  However, life is short and this is not the only problem to be graded -- once the amount of effort to make sense of the answer exceeds the time available to do so, it gets whatever grade it gets.
On changing grades.  I have done this.  On a particular problem, students were to compute the surface area of the non-circular part of a cone.  One student bafflingly had too much area but their computation was scattered around a diagram, so I it was not clear what they were doing.  (Actually writing, "First, we compute ..." and "Then we find ..." would be great.  It would be as if the answer were written in the style that one would answer the question in direct conversation.  But for some reason students refuse to construct their answers in this fashion.)  Several papers later, I found another student who had the same incorrect answer but they had organized their answer so it was possible to figure out that they had included the area of the circle.  "Aha!" said my brain, "that's what that previous student did."  I then went back and adjusted the grade.  (The student had demonstrated the skill "compute this area", although they had obfuscated this fact.)
I require my students to write identities in columns -- this has a number of benefits.  On the first assignment involving identities, I put friendly reminders that identities are written in columns and indicate with boxes and arrows where the student's work should be.  On the second assignment, I just refer to "How to Write [subject]" by item number.  On the third assignment, refer to the item number and take off a few points.  By the fourth assignment, I just write a big, red "X" on answers that are not in the form that has been called out on three prior assignments, and both repeatedly demonstrated and called out in class.
No one will force you to drive on the correct side of the road, or not run with scissors.  However, the action of failing to conform to conventions will have their own consequences.  With as little context as you have provided for the instances of grading that you do not seem to like, it is difficult to draw any conclusions.  Nothing you have written is inconsistent with things I have done in my own grading.  Perhaps you and some of my students think that I am mean for doing this.  But this is false.  If I were mean I would tell my students:  "I look forward to the future for my children, who can write complete sentences respecting margins and correctly fill out forms.  They will have an easy time competing with you for resources.  Why?  Someone with a pile of 100 requisitions, or 100 proposals, or 100 resumes is not looking for a reason to keep every document; they're looking for a reason to discard them.  And 'can't follow simple instructions' is an excellent reason to discard."
Perhaps you feel I am harsh.  Excellent.  Get out there and change the World so that what I have said is no longer true.  I recommend that you find valid solutions to the World's problems and that you explain them clearly and cogently so that everyone can benefit from your wisdom.  (Also, keep it short.  Until all our problems are fixed, no one has time for long, complicated explanations.  If you can't, you're just going to get the listener's equivalent to a big, red "X" -- they stop listening, switch channels, un-friend you, drop your message in "Spam", et al.)

Also, keep it short....no one has time for long, complicated explanations. Great advice to finish off a 1000-word post. :)

@Corvus:  The ideal outcome is that no one reads it, so that it is self-describing at all levels.

Despite the irony of the answer being a bit longer than it needs to be while recommending to keep it short, I think this is an excellent answer. Also, some people (me, for example) actually don't mind long, complicated explanations if they are interesting and well-written.

+1, that's actually a really common reason why I go back and re-grade questions. It sometimes takes a few different iterations of the same mistake by different students to understand where the first student went wrong.

If you have problems with your professor's grading policy, there are a few ways to address this problem:
1) As mentioned earlier, you could attend office hours.
2) If, after a visit with the professor, you feel you have not received a satisfactory response, you will always have the option of appealing to the professor's supervisor - depending on the college, this person may be the head of the department for the relevant discipline.
3) If it is not too late, drop the course. This is what I did when I had a professor with a bad grading policy. Note: While I knew I could not get a refund due to the timing, I thought I would be able to register for another class at no additional cost. However, this was not so. Luckily, an Admissions and Records official approved my petition for a refund.

Dropping a class simply because the professor draws bigger-than-you'd-like X's on your wrong answers would confirm, if not surpass, even the most extreme negative stereotypes about the Millennial Generation.

@Corvus Well, if you phrase it as "Dropping a class simply because the professor draws bigger-than-you'd-like X's on your wrong answers" then, yes, it sounds totally unreasonable. If, on the other hand, you phrase it as "Dropping a class because the professor provides negative feedback in an aggressive and completely unconstructive manner, denying students an important learning opportunity by turning homeworks into nothing more than a check of who knows the material and who doesn't" then it starts to seem much more sensible. What is anyone going to learn in such a class?

@NajibIdrissi Big red cross! You don't understand homeworks!

@NajibIdrissi Exactly. Grading homeworks provides a huge opportunity for the grader to give tailored feedback to the students that helps each student with the parts of the course that they don't understand. The point is not just to see if they understand but also to help them understand more.

@Corvus I missed the part where OP stated their age, along with their generation's nomination of OP as their official representative.


text:
How can an author get assurance that his work will not be stolen by journal staff or reviewers?
Suppose some author provides his original research article to a journal for publication. In this way, he is disclosing or revealing his confidential research work to that journal. Now, consider the case that his article gets rejected. So, is it not possible that whoever reviews that article can publish that kind of work and say that it's theirs? Since the original author's work has not been published and he is disclosing his confidential work to somebody, how could the author get assurance that if his article is rejected, his work will not be leaked by the journal staff in any form? What happens if this kind of thing happens?

Also see How do selection committees ensure that they won't steal an applicant's ideas as presented in his/her research statement?

In math at least, you would circulate the preprint (usually on arXiv) before sending it to the journal, and I think in most cases this would suffice to establish priority.

@tomasz Is this established procedure among mathematicians? I heard arXiv.org's standards weren't very high...

@Pickle: Putting a preprint on arXiv? Yes, absolutely. Are the standards of arXiv itself high, in terms on what stuff you can put there? Definitely not. But what does it matter?

It is unlikely that a reviewer or other participant in the peer review process will outright steal the work he/she is reviewing and publish it as original work, because it is easy to get caught.
If the "real" author of the work accuses the thief of plagiarism, the editor of the journal can verify that the work was originally submitted by the "real" author before it was published by the rogue reviewer.  (Also see: What to do if a referee plagiarises the result after rejecting a paper?)
If the rogue reviewer is caught, the paper will be retracted (which is damaging to his professional reputation) and there may also be other consequences for the reviewer. See e.g. this recent example.

I was looking for this kind of information, thanks.

@codenext I'd add to ff524's answer that it is unlikely that a reviewer or other participant in the peer review process will outright steal the work he/she is reviewing and publish it as original work, because they simply have no reason for stealing it: most reaserchers don't lack of ideas, but of time to pursue them.

But think a research which is very rare, like Riemann hypothesis, if some armature person or person who is not related to that field solves that or atleast makes some progress on that, and want to publish as independent. Now, this kind of research is very rare and brings big name, so any reviewer can change their mind and play around. So I think there should be some international system to protect work of all authors even their raw work also needs to be protected.

@codenext The more attention the work is likely to get, the more dangerous it would be to steal it, since a paper like that would be subject to a lot of scrutiny and the thief would almost certainly be found out. Nevertheless, you may also see Prevent plagiarism after rejection of a paper? and How can I “time-stamp” my data without publishing it?

Hhhmm...that is making sense..

Just for completeness retraction watch reports on a recent case. Note that there are three parties here: the reviewer recommended the paper for publication then showed it to a collaborator who later nabbed a few paragraphs for a paper he was preparing.

Unfortunately, defining "plagiarism" is difficult. Sometimes, even word-by-word plagiarism is not defined to be cheating in some journals. I can offer an example.

Let me add to @ff524's excellent answer.  If you are paranoid, one way to add an additional safeguard would be to post a preprint on arxiv.org or a similar site.  Then you have a public version with a verifiable timestamp, so even if all the journal's staff colluded to steal your idea, you could prove to the community that it was originally yours.

Or, if you're really paranoid and want to keep the contents of your paper secret until your big reveal, you could embed its hash in the bitcoin blockchain :)

Don't forget the even more time honoured tradition of publishing your abstract as an anagram first... link

"You will find that, if you take the second letter in each sentence of the third sub-section of 'Methods', it spells out 'This is mine no stealing'."

I was a reviewer for a journal paper which the editors automatically rejected for having a pre-print on ArXiv. I vehemently disagree with the position of that editor/journal, but it would be a shame to have this happen to you just because you were worried about plagiarism from a reviewer!

@WillRobertson If this was in a field where arXiv is common, then the simple solution is to not publish in a journal which is so far behind the times (there will be plenty of good journals to choose from which do allow this).

@TobiasKildetoft Agreed!! Engineering is somewhat behind the times compared to physics, maths, ...

why this precaution may be needed, taking in account ff524♦'s answer? it may be useful in case when editor of journal is also failed to be reliable. are there other cases? - unauthorised access to email.

arxiv.org also has review/premoderation, that continues for several days. so, except blockchain, that is already mentioned in a comment above by ff524♦, is not it better publishing it in a file hosting, that shows time of submission? and if it is in plain text, to use plain text hosting, that shows proper time of submission and of edits, or does not allow edits? (examples are facebook.com, wikibooks.org, and probably pastebin.com).

@ff524 there is error 404. try https://proofofexistence.com/ instead. i see there "Drag and drop your document here. The file will not be uploaded. ... Documents already registered for certification, waiting for payments." - is not it alternatively possible and better to just use simple bitcoin client, or other similar site, that would be for free, and give possibility to not give the document to untrused script.

facebook has some disadvantages: 1) appearance of a new post on your blog is visible only to registered users 2) if somebody can get unathorised access to your account, they can delete your post.

Here is the advise I got in a creative writing course a while ago:
Print out your article, book draft or whatever. Put it in an envelope and send it to yourself by registered mail (yes good old paper mail). Of course you keep all receipts and administrative documents you get at the post office. Don't open the letter when you receive it.
That gives you a formal and legally binding proof that your text existed at the time you posted it. In case of a formal dispute you have it opened in the presence of notary or whatever legal person can formally confirm the content of the document and the date.

Logically, it is making sense. I believe we can do this with electronic mail also.

The "poor man's copyright" has no legal effect in the US, and probably many other jurisdictions. (Registered mail shows you sent something, but doesn't date the actual document - you could easily have mailed yourself an empty envelope, steamed it open, and put the document in much later.)

@ff524 do the email/private message version, using services like gmail, facebook, have effect in us? as far as i know, it has, i saw a news message that facebook message was accepted as proof by court.

If you will submit to good leading journals of the field, you shouldn't be bothered by this question. If someone is good enough to be a reviewer, she/he has has the ability to produce respectfully publishable papers, and is likely to be a honest person. Only enclosed minds would do such a thing, anyway. Moreover,the journals keep their correspondence up to 5 years, so a legal process could in principle be done if would be the case.

source: Stack Exchange

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

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

sort: votes


text:
Is it a plus point for my PhD application to mention that I am already a PhD candidate at some other university?
I have recently completed my MS and joined as a Ph.D. candidate in the same university. But I want to move out. I am filling the application for an other position where they have asked the following:

Please give the full contact details for you at your permanent institute.
If you do not have a permanent institute, you can use the Leave empty button to
leave this page empty.

There are options to mention that I am currently a Ph.D. candidate. Is it a good idea to mention that I am currently a Ph.D. candidate? I am asking this because someone have told me that if you are currently a Ph.D. candidate, universities don't give much attention to your application.

Some supervisors prefer "fresh meat" that they can train from scratch...

Why are you applying to another school?

@AustinHenley honestly speaking, this university is paying me very little. I am forced to live hand to mouth here. I am completely happy with my research work and supervisor. But money is the main problem here. Also, I am not allowed to work part-time.

Could you have a conversation with your advisor about this? Let it be clear that you are having difficulties in affording basic necessities. Maybe he/she could help somehow. Also, consider internships, as they helped me offset the low pay during my first few years.

Do not lie.  Most PhD applications ask for your complete academic history.  Your complete academic history includes the fact that you are a PhD candidate.

I can't really see how it is a plus, but it could be a big negative.
The obvious question is going to be: why is this student leaving his current university? Doing a PhD involves a pretty hefty investment for both sides, and you're about to leave a university in an attempt to go to another. Universities want to be convinced that you will make it to graduation.
I would expect you to have a very good reason for this (trying to go to a better ranked school after starting at one isn't a good enough rationale to me).

I agree but I do think that wanting a better position is a good reason.

Sounds pretty convincing to me. I think I should not mention my current position in the application form. Thank you so much.

@Buffy I really want to hear more from you.

@LuqmanSaleem I do empathize for your situation, but it will be tricky to convey it in an application. If you say "they aren't paying enough to live" then an interpretation from admissions could be "well why did you accept the offer then?"

@AustinHenley so, if I "properly" mention that I am currently a Ph.D. candidate, it can be a plus point?

@LuqmanSaleem I can't imagine it ever being a plus. Being a PhD candidate is often viewed as being committed to a university/advisor. But switching does happen and can be beneficial. My advice is to always be honest, but be careful how you explain your situation.

@AustinHenley ahan, thank you so much for the very useful advice.

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


text:
Do I use a title in the mention "joint with [...]" when mentioning my advisor or a coworker?
I'm making presentation slides, which will be on the work of my Ph.D. advisor (Dr. X, full professor), a postdoc. (Dr. Y, the job title is visiting assistant professor) and myself. I'm trying to find a way to most accurately/politely address them.
Should I address them using the same generic title, such as

"Joint work with Professors X and Y"
"Joint work with Dr. X and Dr. Y"

or should I use different titles?
Thanks

By the way, you're not addressing them (talking to them) but referring to them (talking about them).

If you really want to include that sort of info, adding , PhD would be my first choice.

@NajibIdrissi I'm not familiar with math, which is why I left a comment. In my field, about 65% of people I work with hold a PhD, and 40% an MD. Having that info on the title slide could give you information on how the researchers approached the problem. I wouldn't say it's required, but that may be why it's acceptable to me to list credentials whereas in math, it would be strange.

Just ask them - they will know exactly what is relevant for that presentation...


text:
Accept a PhD offer from a local school while applying to others?
I just completed a masters in CS at a local school while working as a developer. I liked the process and want to go on to a PhD in other places. My adviser supports my choice and is writing me letters to the other schools. That said, the (small) department has offered me funding to stay on for the PhD, starting in the spring. The faculty in my department study very different things from me. I am applying to much more prestigious places now. If I don't get in I will probably take a year to publish more and then apply again. With that said, should I accept the offer to transfer into the PhD program at my local school? Will it help or hurt my chances if I need to reapply? I could certainly say (credibly) that there is no advisor in my department that supports my interests. I saw this and this but am not sure what to do:
Is transferring to another university an option for an unhappy PhD student?
Trying other PhD opportunities while accepting an offer from my master supervisor?

There is a general rule that if you apply to multiple academic programs in the same year, then once you accept an offer of admission to one of them, you must immediately contact all the others to withdraw your application, so that they can offer admission to someone else.
So if you accept the offer to join your PhD program at the local school, that is a final decision for at least a year, and you have to withdraw your applications from the prestigious places.  You cannot wait and see if a more prestigious school accepts you.  That would be considered unethical.
If after a year, you decide that you want to think about transferring, you can apply to a more prestigious program then.  However, at that time, your new application will need to include your achievements during that extra year, and the program will evaluate your expectations based on what they would expect a first-year PhD student to achieve.  So depending on how that year goes, your application could become either stronger or weaker.

Thanks. The offer from the local school is to start in the spring. Does your advice still apply?

@user25308: That makes it fuzzier, but I think it does.  Another school would have to consider you as a transfer applicant, and I don't think that is likely to work out well if you are transferring from a program you won't even have started.

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


text:
For a future in physics, should I pursue a dual major as opposed to just taking extra physics courses in mathematics degree?
I'm an undergrad studying mathematics right now. I have a very big interest in mathematical applications of physics, and I have been debating whether or not I should change my degree to a dual major (math/physics), because of this annoying little fear that only the math degree won't prepare me for a career in physics research later down the road, at the graduate level. However, the Mathematics is the degree I want (I believe there are more opportunities - I'd also enjoy going into a [bandwagon?] research field like Artificial Intelligence)..
Would a BS (and of course grad school) in Mathematics alone be enough to prepare me for a decent graduate school future, if I decided to pursue research in theoretical/mathematical physics? Or would it be better for me to tack on the dual major in physics? I would rather not stay in school an extra year and a half (it's already taking long enough after the A.S. in computer science!), but if it's necessary, I could do that.
I found another thread on ASE about this, with someone recommending that of course a mathematics major take physics courses - and I have.
My specific question is if it would behoove me to pursue a dual major as opposed to just taking extra physics courses (or a minor).
This is essentially the bare minimum I have to do for just the mathematics major.
These would be the physics courses I could tack on. The darker colors are required for the dual major, the lighter ones are electives.
The grad program I'm looking at, by the way, has a Master's program in Math that offers courses like Riemannian Geometry, Riemann surfaces, Group Theory, etc, which I think are useful in theoretical/mathematical physics at the graduate research level. Here's a picture

Thanks!

Related from the "other" side (coming from physics): Is it necessary to double major with math to be considered for theor. physics grad school?

My answer is specific to the course lists you have linked to, and written from a US point of view.
I recommend taking

Modern
Electromagnetism (at least a whole year)
Quantum (also whole year)
Mechanics
Some kind of statistical mechanics.  2311 may or may not be sufficient.

Electronics lab is for experimentalists.  Since you say you want to do mathematical physics, I don't see any point in that (unless it causes you to change your goals).  Take those electives that interest you.
Also, check the admissions requirements of graduate programs you are interested in.

So, you're saying that the full dual major program would be overkill? Also, instead of taking [undergrad] Quantum Mechanics, there's a course called "Quantum Theory of Two State Systems" (photon polarization states and fermion spin states). Would that be an ok substitute?

Without more information, I would not consider it an okay substitute.


text:
Can mathematical ideas applied to CS problems count as "undergraduate research"?
I ran across this thread, in which the accepted answer mentions to "[..] Start on a research project (independently or otherwise) if you have not already ASAP. "
I'm an undergraduate studying mathematics and physics. I have an Associate's degree in Computer Science, and am very comfortable with programming. I'm currently taking a course in numerical analysis, and this has really motivated me to apply things we're learning to problems I come across while programming.
As an undergrad, with a lack of proper training/education to perform real mathematical research, would it look good (to future graduate schools to which I will apply) if I, for example, write a paper or two based on things I do applying mathematics to Computer Science and programming, e.g.- solving optimization issues in GPU processing of large data sets, etc?
Even if the papers aren't so interesting, would it at the very least look good on my "resume", so to speak?
For the record, I'm hoping to go to graduate school to study mathematics, not computer science, which is why I can't quite answer this question myself.

Undergraduate research is whatever research that you do as an undergrad, period. So if you do something that ends up being publishable, or feeds into another research project in a real way, it's undergraduate research.
However, for practical purposes, you want to get some faculty involved in your research project. It will help with funding for travel (you do want to submit to conferences rather than journals in CS), it will make the work better, and you will end up with a good letter writer afterwards. And if you think your project won't be interesting to faculty in your current school, what makes you think it will later on swoon an admission committee?

would it look good (to future graduate schools to which I will apply) if I, for example, write a paper or two based on things I do applying mathematics to Computer Science and programming, e.g.- solving optimization issues in GPU processing of large data sets, etc?

Sure - if the paper is good. Solving optimization issues does not sound bad at all to me on first glance, but of course it is impossible to tell without seeing the paper or knowing in much more detail what you would want to do.

Even if the papers aren't so interesting, would it at the very least look good on my "resume", so to speak?

I guess that depends on what you mean with "so interesting". It does not have to be A* / Transactions level quality, but the paper certainly needs to be published in a reasonable, peer-reviewed, non-spam venue. Papers in pay-to-publish OA journals don't help at all.
This seems to me to be an unfortunate side effect of the "prior research experience required" mantra that many admission committees nowadays seem to have - many students seem think that sending crap papers to pseudo-venues will help them get accepted. They don't. A paper that is substantially below the level that a prof. would want to submit himself won't help you.

For the record, I'm hoping to go to graduate school to study mathematics, not computer science, which is why I can't quite answer this question myself.

If you want to continue in maths, a maths paper will help more than a CS paper. Still, a good CS paper will be much better than no paper at all, I suppose.

thanks for the answer. BTW, what I meant by "not so interesting" - I'm mainly wondering that if simply the concept that I have written a paper or two as an undergrad will look good to an admissions board, despite whether or not the content of the paper makes their jaws drop (undergrads simply usually don't have that kind of knowledge yet!). So basically, a paper that a professor would say "yes of course this is obvious", but the fact that a student is trying to write papers would impress them ?

@jaska The fact alone that you have published "something" will not impress them. Nowadays, most PhD student applications I get from the middle and far east have 3 - 10 "publications" in spam journals to their name. This weakens their applications, as it makes me afraid that their idea of doing research is sending material that is too weak for a class paper to a pay-to-publish journal. TLDR: quality matters.

@jaska Also, your paper does not need to be something that they themselves wouldn't have been able to do, but it should be something that not every other applicant could have done.

Let me question your question.  First of all, note the disclaimer in the answer you refer to that that user just gave some second-hand advice.  Also, the answer with the most votes places much less emphasis on undergrad research.
For admissions to most grad schools in math, undergrad research is neither necessary or expected (particularly published research--in fact, publications in good journals in math usually take a long time to get accepted, so the chances are low that you would have a good paper accepted by the time you apply for grad schools).
If there are specific problems that you want to research on your own, that's great, and as xLeitix says you should try to get a faculty member to help guide you.  If however you just want to write a paper to help get into grad school, this may not be worth it.  While research experience is good for your application (though may not be extremely helpful if it's not in math), you need to consider the opportunity cost.
What (let's say US PhD) admissions committees are looking for is evidence that you're talented, motivated and have solid preparation.  Even if you've done some research, unless it's outstanding, if you don't have much advanced coursework, or didn't do well in abstract classes, you're probably in a worse position than someone in the opposite situation.  The best preparation for grad school is taking a lot of advanced math classes and doing really well in them.
That said, it's great if you do your own research on the side if it's not at the expense of your coursework, and if you have a faculty to discuss things with, they can write you a recommendation letter that can mean a lot, whether you've published, or even submitted, something or not.  However, if you can do something like an REU (in math), that will be even better.


text:
What are some specific benefits of having my name as a coauthor on a research paper as an undergrad?
I'm finishing up my B.S. in mathematics right now, and I was approached by a former professor with whom I've kept a good relationship, and she asked if I would be able/willing to help her and another professor in a research project they are working on.
My role is pretty purely computational, basically just implementing their mathematical work in code, but she said that it's enough to have me listed as a coauthor on the paper, considering that things don't go south (which, they aren't expected to).
Besides having Erdos number 4 (hey, pretty good for a fresh bachelor's degree), are there some actual benefits that would go along with having my name on a publication?
Just to be clear, this is not an undergrad research opportunity or project, nor do I think(?) it is considered a graduate paper. They are both published professors working on this as a team.
Could this help me get into a better grad school (rather-- master's program) than I would otherwise be able to (pretty average GPA, to be honest)? Help secure some funding? etc

I think what you're asking is the same as (the first part) of the other question.  "graduate level" research paper just means (to me) not "undergraduate level."  (not that there's a clear cut difference)

Ah. I just figured it meant PhD research, but probably you're right

@user37208: I have to disagree with your comment.  Having some research under your belt certainly counts positively, but just having your name on a paper -- especially one coauthored with faculty members who will not be able to point to critical intellectual contributions made by the student -- need not be a game-changer.  The single best thing a math graduate applicant can do is to have taken the right array of challenging courses (including courses which cover graduate level material) and to have performed excellently in these courses -- ideally, compared to actual graduate students.

@PeteL.Clark I take issue with your use of the phrase "just having your name on a paper" -- presumably the student will have their name on the paper for a reason. It's the work they did that is (or isn't) the game-changer, not the name on the paper.

@DanRomik: Unfortunately in my experience a common "reason" an undergraduate student's name is on a paper is that nowadays undergraduate research in mathematics needs to result in publications in order for the research programs to stay competitive for funding.  In most cases the student did work on the paper, but a different student who took up the same research project would have been guided to the same work.  I have never met an undergraduate student who did truly meaningful research and did not excel in their coursework.

... The bottom line is that we don't admit students primarily on the basis of the recommendation letters from their research experiences...which are invariably glowing.

@user37208: I don't think there is a large pack of students who earned excellent grades in truly challenging coursework, so doing this -- in confluence with strong test scores, which is more like checking that the coursework was for real -- really is enough to get into great programs.  For instance, when I applied to math PhD programs I had no papers (published, submitted or in preparation) but I was on my way to a four year BA/MS at my strong undergraduate institution.  I applied to five PhD programs in mathematics and got into all of them, including the top three in the US.

@PeteL.Clark I did mention in the post that this isn't an undergraduate research opportunity.  EDIT -- semantically, I am an undergrad, and this is an opportunity for research -- so that's not so clear ;)  What I mean is that it's not something like an undergrad research project sponsored for school credit that they offer to anyone. (I'm at KSU, btw -- I noticed you're at UGA. One of the authors got his PhD there)

@jaska: I saw that you mentioned that the work didn't take place in the context of an REU.  But it is still research done by an undergraduate and coauthored by faculty members.  As someone who spent several years doing admissions in my math graduate program, I would have evaluated the situation in roughly the same way: it's definitely nice, but in order to change the situation I need to hear from the faculty coauthor that your contribution was crucial.  I also noticed that you don't describe it that way in your question: rather you say that you mostly wrote code to implement their math.

I'm not trying to denigrate your work or be discouraging, by the way.  That you understood the math and had the programming skills to contribute usefully to a project is a real plus.  It's just that -- in my own direct experience, anyway -- that is not the most important part of your application.

Could this help me get into a better grad school (rather-- master's
  program) than I would otherwise be able to (pretty average GPA, to be
  honest)? Help secure some funding? etc

Yes, it can help you with all those things and more (including non-academia-related things like applying for a job in industry). Generally speaking, being a coauthor of a published paper in mathematics says good things about you and your math/STEM/academic/research abilities in any context in which someone would care about those abilities.
However, it's important to take things in perspective and understand that "just" the fact of your being a coauthor on a single paper will not make a huge difference in and of itself. E.g., a grad school or fellowship candidate with no publications can easily "beat" a candidate who has a publication if the former has other good things going for them (a better GPA, better recommendations etc) that the latter doesn't. What I would say matters a lot more is not just being a coauthor, but what you actually did to deserve being a coauthor. If you do an unusually good job on the project, this can translate to excellent recommendations, which will carry a far greater weight in a grad school application than the mere coauthorship line on your CV. If you were just a code monkey who did low quality work, the coauthorship would still be of some value but would overall not be worth very much.
Finally, I should mention that you seem to think that work that's "pretty purely computational" is less important or creative than other sorts of math research, but that is not universally true (although it may be true in specific instances). Even in a computational project there may still be a lot of room for creativity, and a chance to excel in all kinds of unexpected ways. Who knows, you may end up having an idea for a cool optimization that would extend the computational range of the algorithm enough to enable you to discover an amazing new phenomenon your collaborators did not even suspect existed (such things have happened many times). Besides, understanding complicated mathematical constructions well enough to translate them into code can be a highly nontrivial challenge. You would also get to experience the thrill of doing mathematical research and taking a part in the discovery of new knowledge, learn about working collaboratively with others, and probably derive many other benefits from the experience. So, to summarize, I would not scoff at the opportunity to take part in such a project. Doing it just for the paper coauthorship would probably be a bad idea, but doing it for the experience and knowledge you will gain, plus the chance of a coauthorship, seem like excellent reasons to me.

I agree 100% with this, by the way.


text:
Unfair penalization of Bachelors thesis resulting in a "downgrade" of my degree
I recently submitted my completed Bachelors Thesis. In the guidelines we were given for the thesis, it was stipulated that the thesis should not be more than a certain amount of pages long. My thesis due to the nature of the topic it deals with ended up being quite a bit longer than that.
I spoke to my supervisor about this issue and he said that it would not be a problem, and that the guidelines were there mainly to give an idea and that they shouldn't be restrictive based on length.  Upon submission of my thesis to our program coordinator, however, the program coordinator complained about the length of the thesis to me and phoned my supervisor.
The program coordinator informed my supervisor and myself that I was in a violation of the rules of my bachelor's thesis and I would be penalized as a result (in terms of the mark I would receive for my thesis).  I've since received my marks for the thesis and I've discussed the issue with my supervisor and a former head of department, they agree I was unfairly penalized and are writing to the program coordinator to help resolve this issue.
Furthermore my supervisor and former head of department made it known to me that those guidelines I quoted above were only internal (departmental) guidelines, they are not strict guidelines that our university enforces, and it doesn't stipulate anywhere in our official university handbook regarding these matters that our Bachelors theses need to be maximum of x pages. Also, it seems that the program coordinator has enforced the penalization without any external consultation.
As a result of this unfair penalization of my thesis, I will miss out on receiving summa cum laude with my degree which is the highest honors attainable. This may affect my future Masters applications.

Here is my take on the situation: Objectively I do think I was in a violation of the thesis guidelines rules, but it essentially feels like I am being punished for doing too much work.
What can I do (or what should I do) in this situation?
At the moment it seems that I cannot do much, especially regarding the issue that my applications to other universities will contain an unfairly lowered mark and degree status. I don't think I can mention to the universities I'm applying to of my situation in any case as I doubt anyone will care if one of the many applicants to these universities has had some problem like this, plus it may just seem downright odd.

Let me mention that I do not want to put my supervisor in an awkward position as I am grateful to him for giving me the opportunity to do my thesis on my chosen topic and he has been a great mentor to me and I do not want to sour our relationship by bickering over marks. The same goes for the former head of department, who is a former lecturer of mine and who has provided me with numerous opportunities, I do not wish to wish to sour my relationship with her over an issue such as this.

This is a situation that you have to work out with your supervisor, program supervisor and head of department. It is too detailed to be addressed here as we don't have all the regulations for your institution.

To be honest, I think this question could also perhaps  be concised.

@DmitrySavostyanov a skill that might have been useful on the thesis...

Being concise was part of the requirement, obviously. I am not sure why your supervisor told you otherwise, clearly they were not in the position to make that statement. Now, they have to sort it out for you. It is a shame, but let's face it - had you strictly adhered to the original requirements, the problem would not have even surfaced. The lowering of the mark is not strictly unfair, as you didn't follow the requirements, but of course your supervisor has unintentionally misled you and given you wrong advice. Lesson for next time: flout bureaucratic rules at your own peril.

If they change this meaningless rule of strictly bounding the number of papers in a thesis in the future, you can see it as a sacrificing yourself for the next generations. Mathematics should be above bureaucracy.

@CaptainEmacs Well, my supervisor did not anticipate that the program coordinator (who is also another faculty member in the department) would react in such a manner. Furthermore, those guidelines were meant to be guidelines and not rules and I believe historically these length guidelines were not even in place. I do not think my supervisor is at fault here, but I do thank you for your comments.

@Mihail The rule is not necessarily meaningless, even if I do not sympathise with it, personally. Maybe most theses submitted are so mediocre that one wants to avoid wasting referees' time with reading 200 pages of padding. It is not made for the exceptional student. Unfortunately, the "not so good" is the enemy of the "excellent". It's the same thing as with conference papers. Even in some top conferences, pages are very limited. Plus, that's what appendices are for, as they usually do not count towards page count.

@CaptainEmacs what's wrong with making the rule as "The number of pages should be 30 unless your gpa is larger then number"

@Mihail Let's make it even more complicated. Let's set the limit to 30+erf(gpa/pi^2). But seriously: either there is a rule, or there is none, or there is a mechanism to resolve it. Let's face it: The supervisor messed up, they told the candidate that this would not be a problem, and they were not in the position to do so. The school board should now discuss how to resolve this.

I think that your assessment that there is not much that you can do at the moment is correct. Your supervisor (and the other faculty member) should be the ones to address this issue at the faculty level. You should however check the University's regulations regarding the possibility of appealing grades and decisions about "summa cum laude" status. In particular, check if there are any deadlines for doing so. (If there is no tight deadline, you might want to give your supervisor some time to try to sort things out internally before filing any official appeals etc.)
As far as this issue affecting grad school applications. Again your assessment that you should not mention this in your application is probably accurate. Doing so may come off as "whiney" or you trying to avoid responsibility by blaming others. However, if your supervisor is providing a reference letter for your applications, it would be good if they could address the issue in their letter.

Let me add to the answer of mmeent and the answer of xLeitix the following.
If you are intending to apply to graduate school and it proves impossible to work this out satisfactorily, that you get letters of recommendation from at least one of your supporters and they mention the issue specifically. "The student was penalized, improperly, for doing much more than required in the thesis."
I hope (and suspect) that this can be resolved, but if not, it won't necessarily affect your future chances if you handle it properly. Eventually future successes will overwhelm any negative effect here.
But as the other writers have suggested, let your advocates fight the fight on your behalf as long as that has any chance of success.

I think you have largely done what you can do in this stage - you have argued your grade and escalated the issue to your supervisor and other senior academics in your department. At this stage, it may be best to hold your horses and see what your allies can do for you.
If this does not resolve the issue to your satisfaction, you can of course consider formally appealing your grade, but quite frankly this would not be a straight-forward appeal (at least not in my university). The fact that it's not under discussion that you were in fact in violation of the communicated rules may be enough to sink your case. These rules may not be very well thought-out or pedagogically useful, but appeals councils typically do not take the "usefulness" of rules and exam regulations into account - if there is a grading rubric, and your thesis has been graded according to this rubric, an appeal has a high chance of failing. This is because in many universities, the designated examiner of a course or project has a lot of legal protection to design the grading in any way they see fit (even in  a way that the department disagrees with) - the only thing an appeals council can really complain about is if these rules are not communicated, or not applied equally to everybody.
Hence, the only two angles that I see that could possibly work is to  argue that you misunderstood the rules since your advisor communicated the matter differently to you, or that you find previous thesis projects of comparable length which were not penalized.


text:
Can you jettison a project to work on another in the wake of a big discovery?
Let's say Alice is a PhD student who's well into the research phase of a PhD. She's got a nice exciting project she enjoys, a helpful supervisor, she's making good progress. And then there's a big discovery. She's excited about the new discovery, she wants to work on it, and her current project suddenly doesn't seem so interesting anymore. Real life example: suppose Alice is a Chemistry PhD student from the late 1980s working in condensed matter, and the big discovery is cold fusion.
Can Alice ditch her project to work on the new discovery? What if the new discovery is in an area that is not her supervisor's specialization? I'm also curious whether Alice can make this switch if she's a professor (as opposed to PhD student).
My guess would be that it's hard for Alice to do this as a PhD student even if there's another supervisor available, because she would have to start over again and therefore take longer to graduate (running into funding issues). It'd also be an administrative hassle especially if she has to change departments (Chemistry to Physics in example above - the fields are related, but not that related). If Alice is a professor then she would presumably be stuck, because she's got to work on her grants. She could apply for new grants related to the big discovery, but it would be a while before she can work on it. Am I correct?

I wrote my answer before reading the final paragraph. I'm glad I did, because the third paragraph makes the question leading. I'd suggest shrinking the text of the final paragraph and prepending with a remark along the lines of Here are my thoughts, perhaps read them after you've given an answer.

Are you considering a change of field? (You needn't answer that.)

Can Alice do this? Yes. Should Alice do this? Much more difficult question.

@user2768 Am I considering a change of field? Yes actually. But as Flyto mentioned, whether I should do this is a hard question to answer. It's not like my current work is no longer interesting, but reading about the exciting developments in the other field makes me feel like, damn, I'm missing out.

@Allure Have your cake and eat it: Presumably your current work is actively moving forwards, is well(ish) staffed, and financed. Keep that going. In parallel, start working on the exciting developments in the other field. Will that be hard? Absolutely, you'll have two full time jobs! Is it sustainable? No way. But, you can re-evaluate six- and twelve-months in.

Can Alice ditch her project to work on the new discovery?

Alice has many responsibilities in her life, including satisfying her sponsor and producing her thesis. Whether she should ditch her project depends on those responsibilities. IMO, she perhaps doesn't have enough time to fulfil her obligations and ditch her project (PhDs are short), so she might need to delay working on the new discovery. There's perhaps an exception if Alice is in the early stages of her PhD.

What if the new discovery is in an area that is not her supervisor's
  specialization?

That's not particularly relevant: Many students work under the supervision of advisors that aren't specialists in their research areas.

if she's a professor (as opposed to PhD student).

Then, she isn't bound to the time constraints of a PhD, but still has other responsibilities.

I'm also curious whether Alice can make this decision

Yes, she can. Who else would make it? Pressure may be applied by others, but, ultimately, the decision is Alice's. (That said, she may get sued for her decision, e.g., if she ditches her project without delivering upon contractual obligations, but that's perhaps unlikely in academia, even less-so for student-Alice, as opposed to professor-Alice.)

I'm also curious whether Alice can [feasibly] make this switch if she's a professor (as opposed to PhD student).

If Alice truly wants to switch, then Alice can make it happen. There may be many barriers: personal, institutional, contractual (including funding obligations), ... But, they can be overcome. That said, should she switch? That's up to Alice. She perhaps has a relatively easy position right now, switching will be a massive upheaval.

I was with you until the very end.  Under what circumstances could changing projects result in Alice being sued?

I changed "make this decision" to "make this switch" - obviously Alice is the one who makes the decision, but I was asking whether Alice can actually make it given the constraints she undoubtedly faces.

@Allure Are you questioning whether it is feasible for Alice to switch?

@NateEldredge Shirking contractual responsibilities can get you sued. I'll clarify

@user2768 yes, that's what I meant.

@Allure Edited. (Perhaps related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1696/how-might-changing-topic-affect-a-career-in-academia and https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2632/how-unusual-is-changing-fields)

So basically there is someone who is "motivated" towards new project and "demotivated" towards old one. One should consider theories of motivation in psychology here. Considering Psychology always helps according to my experience because it predicts our own acts accurately. So in this case “EIV theory of motivation” can be considered in order to take right decision.
According to this theory you are motivated in current state because you see that "output" of the new project is very good as compared to your current project. Second thing is that you have presumed that you will get "more output" while putting "same efforts" in new project. Other thing is that, you consider everything in your favour so that you are fully "able" to discover something big. These thoughts are unconsciously in the back of our mind.
The thing that person should really think of is validity of these unconscious thoughts. First motivational factor will not change irrespective of any condition and situation. At this current situation, as idea is new he/she is very energetic. So he/she may ignore extra work that will really add up in order to do something entirely new. This is surroundings as well as situation related factor. For e.g. he/she may require to change his/her guide person or idea may be entirely off-field for him/her. Other thing is ability and it strongly depends on self-determination and other surrounding factors. For e.g. you may be self-determined but if you are unable to raise funds which are unexpectedly very high then you may fail. He/she should consider all these internal and external factors in detail, consciously in order to assure goal accomplishment.


text:
Affiliation in conflict-of-interest situations
This is a follow-up question to What affiliation to put on an academic paper for alumni authors? Some time ago, I read a paper published in a journal owned by my employer which was very far-fetched. It espoused a very non-mainstream theory. It looked so far-fetched that I couldn't believe the journal would accept it, but I confirmed with the desk editor of that journal that it wasn't a mistake. I also saw the review - the reviewer agreed it was very speculative, but couldn't outright call it wrong, and so recommended acceptance.
I could think of reasons why the theory was wrong, so I wrote up a letter to the editor and submitted it to the journal.
Question: what's my affiliation? From aeismail's answer to the above question, my affiliation is where I did the research work. That makes my affiliation the publisher (however I was not contracted to do research work, and I did this on my own time). However there's potential conflict-of-interest here since I'm submitting to my employer's journal. If I listed my employer as my affiliation, it might seem that I've circumvented the normal peer review process. In practice the peer review process happened as normal, and I was not involved in it at all, but this would not be apparent to anyone not an employee of the publisher.
I got out of this dilemma by listing the university that granted my most recent degree. They maintain a university email address for life, so I used that. Nobody has complained, but I'd like to know if this was the right affiliation.

@NateEldredge oh boy, now I'm wondering if I should write to the journal asking to retract the submission. They know just as well as I do that I wasn't involved in the review however (heck they probably don't know I was employed by the publisher). Only the desk editor knew, and she probably didn't communicate that to the editorial board.

Echoing other comments: no, there's no "getting out of it"...

You run into really interesting dilemmas...

I disagree pretty strenuously with what you have done.
First of all, being an alumnus is not an "affiliation".  If you weren't a student or employee of the university at the time you did the work, it's not your affiliation and should not be listed as such.  You're welcome to list your alumni email address if you like, but that's your contact information, not your affiliation.
I would say your affiliation is your employer, the publisher.  Or, if you feel strongly that the work was done "on your own time", then you may omit any affiliation.
However, independently of any of this, you had a duty to disclose your employment by the publisher, as a potential conflict of interest.  Conflicts of interest may exist regardless of your affiliation and must be disclosed.  You can certainly add additional information that you think may help the reader evaluate the issue (e.g. "I was not involved in the review").
I have to say I'm pretty concerned with the notion that you would "get out of this" by concealing the potential conflict.  That's exactly the wrong instinct, and contrary to every principle of academic ethics.  You address conflicts of interest by disclosing them.  The fact that "nobody has complained" isn't dispositive; it's not their job to find and disclose your conflicts for you.  What you've done can be grounds for retraction all by itself (see for instance https://retractionwatch.com/category/by-reason-for-retraction/failure-to-disclose-coi/), though if the omission seems to be accidental, a published correction can suffice.
If the letter hadn't yet been published, I would advise you to contact the editor and ask for a conflict-of-interest disclosure to be added ("the author is an employee of XXX but did not participate in the review of the cited paper").  Or if that is not possible, to withdraw the letter.
In this case, you say the letter was published long ago, so it's less clear what to do.  Probably the safest course of action would be to write to the editors, apologize, and ask that a correction be published.  I don't think it's necessary to correct the affiliation per se, but rather to correct the fact that your potential conflict was not disclosed.  It's possible they will decide that retraction is more appropriate, but that's their call.

The letter's been published - this was years ago @@ Before submitting the letter I also showed a draft to professors at my alma mater; one of them actually suggested I list that as my affiliation ...

@Allure, that advice was not good, I think. Such deceits should be corrected late rather than not at all... even if there was not (as far as you believe) any prejudicial effect on your appraisal of the situation. Even if you were never "caught", correction of this mis-step will make your conscience easier, and is the right thing to do.

@paulgarrett the last time I wrote something similar (https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/102175/cheated-on-an-exam-when-i-was-eight-years-old-should-i-tell-graduate-admissions) a lot of people poured scorn on the idea that I was even thinking about revealing it. There's also an argument for blinding reviewers & editors to remove subconscious bias as well, and yet it was inappropriate to do what I did here. I gotta say, academia boggles my mind.

@Allure I would just say that there is a dramatic difference between the ethical obligations of an eight-year-old in school, and those of an adult submitting an item to an academic journal.  And I don't at all understand the relevance of your comment about blinding.  Your ethical duty here was ultimately owed to the readers, and nobody is talking about blinding them.

@NateEldredge Oh, I see we're thinking of different COI. I was thinking about the journal's editors have trouble handling the submission, similar to an editor receiving a manuscript from his head of department. Your answer makes much more sense now. I will sort this out.


text:
What generally happens if a department is unable to attract students?
Say the math department used to teach 200 students, but because each year the number of students interested in math has decreased, now it only teaches 100 students. What are the usual practical consequences?
This clearly depends on the internal policy of the institute, but I wonder if some generalizations are possible, e.g. whether the department will be forced to downsize or whether people outside the department will intervene and try to help the department get more students.

It sounds like this would very much depend on the university and who's in charge. Maybe the dean is a mathematics professor, or maybe he just hates math and is looking for an excuse to get rid of it.

Sure, this question is broad, but answerers can clarify to which country, field, etc. their answer applies. Voting to reopen.

I don't agree this question is off topic. The help center explicitly says questions about "Inner workings of research departments" is within scope. Voting to reopen.

reopen this question, it is important for academia, also not fair @Maarten Buis he gave good answer.

As comments already indicate, this is hugely dependent on the country and university.
When I was in the Netherlands funding of the university was directly related to the number of students and the number of students who finished. This dependency was passed on by the universities to the departments. Typically, there was some sort of delay build in, so the budget would not become too unpredictable.
Usually fluctuations are not as dramatic as in your scenario, and smaller decreases can usually be covered by reducing the budget for conference visits, inviting speakers, etc.
However if the number of students halfs then cuts in personel are pretty much unavoidable, as personel is by far the largest post in the budget. However, firing people on a permanent contract is hard. It is much much easier to not prolong a temporary contract. The department usualy consisted of a small number of professors (on permanent contract) plus a larger number of lecturers (some on a permanent contract and some on a temporary contract). So the professors and lecturers on a permament contract are safe, but they will have a smaller department.
So this is a case where there was an explicit policy to add such a feedback. However, this description is specific to the Netherlands (and may not even be current). Other countries are organized differently. Even within countries there can be a difference between universities or types of universities.

I guess if the change happens over a long enough time period the other solution is to simply not replace those who retire.

@IanSudbery That usually not a viable strategy. There are often only 4 or 5 persons on a permanent contract in a department. The chance that one of those retires at the right moment is very slim. Moreover, as I said in the answer, there are very few professors in a Dutch department and they fulfill crucial management roles. Not replacing those is often just not an option.

Differences between systems I suppose. My department has 35 permanent academic staff and our maths department has similar. Although there are only a small number of professors (i.e. chairs), when one retires, someone will move up to replace them, but if necessary no junior member will be hired to replace the promoted lecturer. Recently my dept. came out of a period when no one had been hired for 10 years.


text:
Are results that are derived simply by using more computational power publishable?
Let's say Alice has written a paper that attacks a well-known problem in a clever new way. Her paper ends with "these methods work up to N = 10; for larger N, the calculations are prohibitively expensive".
Bob reads the paper and successfully duplicates Alice's results, but where Alice only had access to a 4-core desktop, Bob has a 4000-core supercomputer. Therefore he can calculate what Alice found prohibitively expensive, and get results up to N = 20.
Are Bob's results publishable? He didn't actually do anything special, he just had more computational power. On the other hand, the results are definitely new, and interesting (for whatever reason N = 20 is the point where interesting effects are predicted).
If they are publishable, what would Bob actually write in such a paper? Everything sans the result could effectively be communicated in one sentence ("Read Alice's paper"). If they are not publishable, how is Bob to communicate his results to the wider world?
I suspect something like this has happened in the past, in which case I'd appreciate a link to such a paper.

I’m pretty sure that if Bob did write a paper about something like this, it’d include the standard sections (e.g. abstract, introduction, methodology, results, conclusion), and cite Alice in the introduction where he’s providing context about the research problem and why it’s important.

I don't think this is exactly what you're looking for, but this paper was only possible because of increased computational power, and almost any first-year CS undergrad today could write the program to do the search.

Many results at the Large Hadron Collider were achieved 'simply' because they had a bigger particle accelerator. Perhaps there is a parallel there?

@Time4Tea You juuust beat me to it! Maybe I can write a longer comment? I was trying to remember the name of the next-largest collider that the LHC surpassed.

At the very list, Bob replicates Alice's results. Depending on the results, that might not be trivial and thus be valuable

Check out the Sum of Three Cubes. It took increased computing power to find the solutions for (in order of discovery) 33, 42, 906, 165, and (a non-trivial) 3 (all of them this year and requiring over five million computing hours combined).

"If they are not publishable, how is Bob to communicate his results to the wider world?"  Really? These days I read just as much interesting stuff on people's private blogs as I do in academic papers.  Publishing on your blog, or on medium, or other sites.... is publishing, even if it is not peer-reviewed academic publishing.

@chipbuster: I have a colleague whose tenure application got held up because non-math people on the promotion committee considered his couple-page math publication to be unacceptably short. I wonder how that example would play out in this context.

Probably the most famous example is the four color theorem

I would say they're not publishable just because more cores were used, but they're probably publishable because they provide an additional insight, such a lower uncertainty.

In machine learning, more compute-associated results are publishable. If you've been following recent work in natural language processing, the amazing progress on language benchmarks can be in-part attributed to throwing more compute at the problem. BigGAN showed that dramatically scaling up a baseline method was able to significantly improve the state of the art in creating realistic images from random noise. A key distinction is that these methods did make non-trivial changes while scaling up. Rich Sutton wrote a nice essay on this: http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html

(I switched the order of a couple of your questions to give the answer a more logical flow.)

On the other hand, the results are definitely new, and interesting (for whatever reason N = 20 is the point where interesting effects are predicted).

If the results are new, and interesting, then they are by definition publishable. The key point is they add something meaningful to the sum total of human knowledge. That’s certainly a sufficient criterion for publishability (in an idealized sense it should be necessary as well, but I fear it isn’t - plenty of things get published that don’t really meet this condition).

Are Bob's results publishable? He didn't actually do anything special, he just had more computational power.

The concept of “doing something special” is both mostly meaningless and (to the small extent that it has any meaning) completely irrelevant to the question of publishability. Plenty of authors of excellent papers “didn’t do anything special” - they just had more patience and were willing to work a bit harder, or in many cases just got a little bit luckier, than their peers, and ended up discovering something significant. Publication is not a prize that’s given for “doing something special”, it’s simply the scientific community putting a stamp of approval on a discovery that it is correct, new, and worth paying attention to.
By the way, one can even say that a researcher Bob who works harder than his peer Alice is pretty much the exact scenario you are describing of someone “having more computational power”. In this case the computational power is of the human sort, but I don’t see why that should change the calculation.
Edit: another thought is that Bob actually did “do something special”. It’s not just that he had more computational power, but he had the foresight and intuition to realize that it would be worthwhile to apply that computational power to Alice’s particular problem rather than spend his time and resources doing any number of other things. So although it’s not really that important as I said above, even by your own criterion I think there is more merit to the achievement than your description makes it sound.

If they are publishable, what would Bob actually write in such a paper? Everything sans the result could effectively be communicated in one sentence ("Read Alice's paper").

Bob would simply write what he did and what the results were, and what makes them interesting. If it can really be described in one sentence I’d argue that it likely wasn’t such an interesting result after all. But on the off-chance that it was indeed interesting, then it would make for a great one-sentence paper. There isn’t any rule that papers have to be longer than one sentence.

I remember reading a list of the shortest published papers. (paraphrased) "Here is how to do X with Y units: " (this was a mathematical paper for quite a simple problem)

+1, but I think you misinterpreted the OP a little in your final paragraph. OP knows that the results probably need more than one sentence - "Everything sans the result could effectively be communicated in one sentence". The one sentence OP refers to is the one that references the previous paper, rather than rewriting what has already been written there.

@JBentley the wording is a bit ambiguous so I can’t be sure what OP meant exactly, but it looks like they are wondering how a paper can be written about the new result when essentially all there is to say about it is “Read Alice’s paper and set N=20.” What I wrote in my answer corresponds to that interpretation of the question. But yes, I can see that you have a point and that the paper may end up having some additional content describing why the N=20 result is significant, etc.

It seems interesting (for once!) to consider edge cases.  Suppose for instance that Alice's paper contains a link to code, and Bob downloads the code and uses it on his computer without change.  Then it seems that Bob has no intellectual contribution and should not write a paper.  As for having the insight to devote his resources to it: well, maybe Alice's hiring committee should be authors on her paper?  Or the governor of the state if she is at a state university?  And so forth.

@PeteL.Clark I’m not really into analyzing such how-many-angels-can-dance-on-the-head-of-a-pin-type hypotheticals myself, but I‘d be happy to read an answer discussing this if you’d care to write one.

Got any examples of one sentence papers?  I think "This repeats Alice's paper with N=20. " Together with all the expanded tables and charts is likely to be desk rejected.   My experience is that editors and referees will make you write at least a halfway decent literature review (or cite some), explaining the previous work and why going from N=10 to N=20 allows comparison of theories, resolves a controversy, or is otherwise an interesting thing to do.

@PeteL.Clark I'd definitely be interested in an answer that deals with those edge cases, especially the first one (Bob downloading Alice's code and running it was what I was thinking of when I wrote the question)!

'There isn't any rule that papers have to be longer than one sentence' - this reminded me of something interesting I found a while ago - http://tinytocs.org/ a sight with 140 char or less research papers in Computer Science -  does this count for examples @Paul ?

@Cinderhaze Interesting, looks like authors make the body very short by putting more into the abstract. The ones I briefly skimmed had no tables/figures, so its apparently not for empirical studies (although one could publish the data separately, which is a thing now).

@Paul I think the point here was that the results need to be interesting. If the calculations from N=10 to N=20 just develop an expected curve a little further along the X axis that might not be that interesting... If they, however, bring something new to the equation, e.g. showing that previous assumptions about the problem/solution were wrong, the that very much is interesting and publishable. It's really not about the length of the paper...

A good example would be the following paper: Lander, Parkin. Counterexample to Euler's Conjecture on Sums of like Powers, https://www.ams.org/journals/bull/1966-72-06/S0002-9904-1966-11654-3/S0002-9904-1966-11654-3.pdf. There an interesting example was found using computing power which was not available at the time of the conjecture. However, the paper does not contain further information on the problem or the method.

Papers like this can be published, and can be extremely important
There is no inherent reason why a paper of this nature would not be publishable, and indeed, there are some examples where papers of this nature have been published in high-ranking journals and have been extremely important papers.  Whether a paper of this nature is publishable largely depends on the importance of being able to compute outcomes of the problem to a higher level.  In some cases this will be unimportant, and the paper would be rejected; in other cases it would be extremely important, and the paper could become an important work in the field.  Note also that the mere fact that the additional computation does not involve "anything special" from a theoretical standpoint, is often quite irrelevant to the importance of the result.
The most obvious example I can think of here is Shaeffer et al (2007) Checkers is solved.  This paper was published in the prestigious Science journal.  It extended earlier works computing the game-theoretic solution to the game of checkers.  In this paper the authors had managed to obtain sufficient computing power to (weakly) solve the game, and this was a major innovation in the game-theoretic analysis of checkers.  According to the authors:

The effort to solve checkers began in 1989, and the computations needed to achieve that result have been running almost continuously since then. At the peak in 1992, more than 200 processors were devoted to the problem simultaneously. The end result is one of the longest running computations completed to date.

In this particular case, the additional computing power accruing over time made the difference between early calculations that could not solve the problem, and later calculations that constituted a solution.  This particular paper only weakly solves checkers (meaning that it gives perfect play from the starting point of the game, but it does not give perfect play from every possible board state).  The next expected innovation would be to strongly solve checkers (i.e., find perfect play from every possible board state), and I imagine that the team that does this will also get an excellent publication in a high-ranking journal.

I don't think the Checkers paper is an example, as they did develop new methods in the paper, the result was not obtained "simply by having more computational power".

@JiK: From reading the paper, it does not appear to me that there is much (if anything) in methodological innovation over the previous runs.  The paper cites previous literature that establishes the method, and also cites previous papers that used that method on checker boards with less pieces.  So the method for the computations was developed in earlier papers, and already applied to smaller versions of the problem.  The advent of greater computing power then allowed the computation to be run for a board with all the pieces, resulting in this paper.

In addition to the excellent answers that have already been given, the question indicates to me a common misunderstanding what papers actually are. They are, or at least should be, the communication of ideas, results, or some other type of knowledge that may be of interest to others. They are not badges of honour or grades or brownie points for doing X atomic units of research. In that sense, "how much work was it?", "how difficult was it?", or even "how large is the delta to existing work?" are fundamentally not the right questions to ask when evaluating whether something is publishable. If you have a stroke of genius and write down a cool idea very quickly, it's value to society is in no way diminished. Conversely, spending a lot of time on a bad idea does not make it more valuable to society.
However, as I wrote initially, it's an easy mistake to make because there is, of course, a correlation between effort/complexity and value/interestingness. Simple ideas are not often extremely valuable, because the chance that somebody else had the same idea before is high.
Apply this thinking to your question:

Are Bob's results publishable? He didn't actually do anything special, he just had more computational power. On the other hand, the results are definitely new, and interesting (for whatever reason N = 20 is the point where interesting effects are predicted).

Doing "anything special" isn't in truth what makes papers accepted. If there are interesting effects to be observed for N=20, then go for it. That said, to my ears it does sound a bit suspicious that all that was needed to resolve an open question that people actively find interesting is to throw a little more hardware at it. I would make quite sure that indeed nobody has done it and that there are indeed interesting effects to be observed (and then I would still wonder a little why nobody has done it yet, unless the paper you build upon has appeared like a week ago).

If they are publishable, what would Bob actually write in such a paper?

Summarize the original work to the extent that is needed to actually follow your paper (given the setup this may be quite a lot more detail than what you would typically dedicate to previous work - that's ok, as long as you make it clear that these are not your new results). Describe your setup and experiment. Then, if the interesting results for N=20 are what should carry this publication, describe these results and in which ways they are interesting in a lot of detail. Connect them to previous results for smaller Ns, and, if possible, go to the bottom of why the results start becoming more interesting for higher Ns.
If that does not give you enough "meat" for a normal conference or journal article, there are alternative publication venues dedicated to shorter articles, such as journal notes.

Clarification: when I wrote the question, I intended it to mean that the interesting effects at N = 20 are predicted theoretically, so they might not be there at all after the calculations are done. E.g. when modeling a particle physics reaction, the results depend on how many small corrections one wants to include, and at some point it becomes intractably many, but when the experiments are precise enough then investigating the intractable calculations might be worth doing anyway. Maybe at N=20 the results are predicted to be precise enough to say if the theory matches experiment.

Are Bob's results publishable? He didn't actually do anything special, he just had more computational power.

What you say is not correct. According to my experience things are not as simple as what you think in supercomputers. It is not just simply copying and pasting the codes. The codes should be prepared in a completely different manner and need some adjusting and tunning in some cases. You do not have that much flexibility in coding in supercomputers as you have on your laptop. In fact, improving an algorithm and making it runnable in supercomputers is itself a challenge and might be worth publishing, even if the final results are not that distinctive.

@Aaron: so what if the code can get compiled?  Unless the is written to use the supercomputer's features (like very wide buses for parallel floating point calculations, dispatch systems to run thousands or millions of jobs in parallel, etc), the program is wasting the supercomputer.  Making an algorithm work on a supercomputer is a nontrivial effort and often worth publishing in itself.

@Aaron I wasn't trying to be accurate. I was just trying to share my own experience, which is true in many supercomputers. Now I don't want to talk about the obstacles related to working with supercomputers. But the obvious point is that things are not as idealized as you have stated.

@Aaron I think you are technically correct that the answer doesn’t strictly answer the question, instead it challenges the premise of the question by pointing out that it is in fact rare that one can squeeze better computational performance on a problem by simply compiling and running someone else’s code on a faster computer. But keep in mind that such “frame challenge” answers are very common on this (and other) stack exchange sites and can be valuable and add useful insight despite technically “not answering the question”. In particular I think this answer is interesting and upvoted it.

@Aaron: that's what Kratos said and you "corrected".

@Aaron: "What you say is not correct. According to my experience things are not as simple as what you think in supercomputers. It is not just simply copying and pasting the codes. The codes should be prepared in a completely different manner and need some adjusting and tunning in some cases. You do not have that much flexibility in coding in supercomputers as you have on your laptop. "  Hope this helps.

@Aaron: I totally agree with you on this "If it took you a lot of effort to improve on the algorithm to make it run on a distributed network, then you might still be able to publish even if not in the way you think... or you might be able to publish twice". As a result, I improved my answer. I hope that clarifies everything.

Dan Romik and Reinstate Monica have both given good answers. I'm going to give another answer with a slightly different emphasis with two points.
First, that there are specific journals which are often devoted to this sort of thing or close to it. One of those journals is the Journal of Computational Mathematics. That journal has a wide variety of articles, ranging from very pure number theory to mathematical physics ,but generally involving heavy duty computations.
Second, almost any paper which runs something for longer is going to be able to say something beyond just that they ran it for longer, and if I reviewed a paper, I'd like at least something beyond that. Explanations of any code tweaks they did would be one thing. Another thing would be any patterns they noticed in the data that wasn't obvious, or additional conjectures. Most of the time, if one is implementing something this way one is probably going to be thinking of the problem well enough that one will have at least something additionally novel one can say even if it is very minor.

I think the answer is determined by WHY such a study with N > 10 is conducted. E.g.

Show off of computational power, for example, by calculating more decimals for Pi, beyond what is practically needed. About 39 digits are needed to  calculate the circumreference of the known universe to the accuracy of a hydrogen atom. Calculating a Pi value beyond N = 40 is a sport with little scientific value per se.
Attempt to test a hypothesis (derived from a theory, model, or experiment) that something interesting happens when N is in a certain range. For example, model a material structure consisting of more atoms, providing a better view on how such material behaves.

Both results are publishable!
The second example is inherently very interesting for publishing. Especially, if the results are significant.
The first example could be used to report recent advances in computer performance, report a novel method for scaling up resource-intensive computations, demonstrate the use of a supercomputer on a simple example, or raise public awareness of science and research.
There is also nothing wrong to replicate an earlier study, e.g. by demonstrating how certain algorithms scale from personal computers to supercomputers.
In your paper, you can summarize the earlier study, motivate your angle, and report and explain your results.

A lot of the answers already given are great but something that may help Bob make a decision about whether or not to publish a paper describing his results is to classify his methodology against other fields of research.  In a more soft science, what Bob did would absolutely warrant a paper because there is a lot of difference between what he did and what Alice did, even if he followed her methodology to a T.  From a hard science perspective, it may be better for Bob to contact Alice and see if they could collaborate on extending her existing paper or creating a new one if they find the scope is larger.
Since computer science kind of falls into a grey area of hard vs soft science and how Bob publishes his results should be based off of his interpretation of what methodology he used.  A hard science result can be easily reproduced in the sense of X result was achieved with Y equipment and took Z amount of {time, temperature, pressure, etc}.  If Bob had access to Alice's source code and did not have to make any changes to run on his supercomputer, this may be a situation where he would contact Alice to share his results.
If Bob had no access to Alice's source code and rewrote from pseudocode or basic descriptions of the program from her paper, this would very much be a case where Bob should have no reservations about publishing his own paper describing his findings.  There is a varying degree of how well authors describe their methodology and even if Alice was very descriptive, Bob could easily find a difference between his methodology and hers if he had to rewrite it, even if it is not immediately obvious.
Ultimately, the decision is up to Bob.  A lot of answers above have mentioned there is no harm in more papers and if the result N = 20 is truly interesting, it would certainly merit its' own paper for the knowledge that it would contribute.  In my personal opinion, computer science is much closer to a soft science than a hard science.  To truly prove some results, it has to be reproducible by many researchers from bare-bones methodology with relatively similar results for something to be conclusively true.  There are so many moving parts involved in computers that it really is more comparable to a Psychology than a Physics.

Its completely publishable and called 'secondary literature' (Which is different than secondary source):
It relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere. A secondary source contrasts with a primary source, which is an original source of the information being discussed.
May fall under a review article too.
As a clarification: Secondary literature is material that interpret, evaluate, or analyze the evidence derived from primary materials and/or sources.

This answer is wrong. Doing additional computations is not review; one is doing something beyond what is in the literature. Nor is doing additional computations purely discussion of pre-existing primary sources, since again one is doing something which those sources did not.

I think you might be mistaken about what a "secondary source" is.

@ Sneftel I did not spoke about a secondary source. I spoke about secondary literature.