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What to do with an overtly exasperating colleague in computer science?
I am working on my undergraduate research project in an HPCC. Whoever does programming knows this is a "teach-yourself" skill. Everytime a problem arises, you search the wealth of tutorials and guides on the Internet, you ask in an specialized forum and the last resource is to consult a colleague (everybody is very occupied with their own business).
A few weeks ago, a new MSc candidate entered our lab and was assigned a seat next to me. She seems unable to go beyond very basic commands like executing a for loop in a Bash script. We helped during the first weeks, but she is making no progress. I myself handed her down a couple of tutorials and scripts. What exasperates us is that the more frustrated she gets the more she starts mumbling expecting that someone will approach and solve the problem for her, not to mention that she interrupts every five minutes asking the same question we have answered several times. We spoke about it in the most kindly possible way, now she says we are bullying her!
She is completely unprepared and we are starting to think that she lied to get accepted by our supervisor. She is destroying the amicable relations in our lab and affecting performance of almost everybody. I decided to program the most I can in my laptop instead of using the HPCC, but a process that gets done in five minutes at home is solved in seconds in the lab.
We don't want to mess up her reputation with our supervisor, but we got to find solutions. Does anyone had a similar situation with a colleague? How would you solve it in the most diplomatic way?
UPDATE: Group meeting this morning. Our supervisor found out she has done nothing. She blame us. Our supervisor said it is not our business to solve her problems, she might have spoken them out a couple of weeks ago. She (our supervisor) asked her to separate an appointment to talk privately. Let's see what happens...

Whoever does programming knows this is a "teach-yourself" skill. — [citation needed]

@JeffE And if it were true, How do you teach yourself the "teach-yourself" skill? ;)

If she claims to have studied computer science at undergraduate level, this raises questions about the credibility (or existence) of her undergraduate grades/award (maybe her undergraduate institution has low standards for passing a CS degree, or maybe it does not invigilate examinations very well). If she hasn't, this raises questions about the level of preparation MSc students are expected to put in before working in the HPCC lab. Either way, it's something that should be raised at a higher level.

@JeffE Read the phrase that come afterwards and I guess you'll get the point. Your answer isn't constructive to solve the questions.

@RobinGreen, Yes. We are starting to think that she cheated to get admitted, but we cannot prove it and start something that may seem a witch-hunt.

@JeffE Although the OP may be a bit harsh in his/her language, I agree with the OP in that I would expect that the average MSc student in CS should be able to figure things out on his/her own (perhaps slowly) after getting some basic help.

At the grad school level I would expect a degree of self-teaching in essentially any discipline. Sheesh, I expect college juniors and seniors to be starting to develop the habits that make self-learning efficient.

A side point:  Why are you not connecting to the HPCC remotely? Its not (generally) possible to interact with HPCC's directly (normally you remotely connect (SSH etc), and then trigger a batch job to spread across the whole cluster).
If you were remotely connecting then it shouldn't matter whether you are in the lab or on your laptop.

@Oxinabox I am the undergraduate and until I pass a probation time, I won't get a SSH password. Everytime I need to do something, the posdoc in charge checks the script and gives me permission. I speaked about five minutes, but I have run processes that take several hours in the HPCC, imagine how that would be in my computer...

"asking the same question we have answered several times" A simple solution is rather then giving answer ask a back question all the time "What else have you tried" OR "Have you to Google it" :)

I'd upvote this 20 times if I could.  Remember everything you have tried, what works and what doesn't work, because you will encounter people just like this in the professional workplace.  And their presence will be just as baffling.  I wonder if other fields are afflicted with people like this.

It sounds like the individual could benefit from reading http://www.whathaveyoutried.com (unfortunately, there isn't a very tactful way to redirect people to that site).

@JeffE I have confirmed by personal experiment. ;) Note that this happens in non-research programming, as well. This question would be equally valid on Workplace. I wouldn't accuse her of cheating or lying; I recall vividly working with people in upper level CS classes who ultimately didn't seem to know what they were doing and even a couple of coworkers. Yet they passed anyway. It's very possible to get a degree without being competent in your field of study.

@dmckee: "I expect college juniors and seniors to be starting to develop the habits that make self-learning efficient." Is that a way to say "education totally fails to teach them, we don't even get why, so let's give up being teachers and declare this a non-problem"?

@Blaisorblade no, it is a way of saying it is absolutely impossible to teach them everything they are going to ever need in the classroom. Even at university, people have different knowledge gaps, and while it is the teacher's duty to fill the ones that most students have, it is impossible to cover each and everyone. And they need to learn how to fix it.

@Blaisorblade In addition to what Davidmh said, learning is always something that students do and not something that teachers do to students. And while the earliest stages should be fully directed by teachers, advanced skills have to be learned by doing them and the teacher is there to guide and support the student; turning them away from blind alleys and showing them how to refine the skills. By the junior level students need to be primarily working on those advanced skills and they have to figure out how their own process works. That is not something I can do for them.

Sorry, mine was a comment about the whole of education — lots of "self-learning" abilities should be taught before university.

Leaving aside the intricacies of bash, the essence of the question is how to deal with coworkers you perceive as not equally adept as you, which is not unique to academia, so better learn it as early as possible.

"and the last resource is to consult a colleague (everybody is very occupied with their own business)" That's the status quo, but it's arguably one of the things that are wrong in software engineering culture.

You have a legitimate complaint (you are not there to teach that stuff). However, that's surrounded by misconceptions that I'd like to correct. Philip Guo's has written excellently on the topic and I recommend his post; I'll apply his idea to what you describe (which is a part of your actual case).
There are two explanations for the situation you described:

she's indeed incompetent on stuff she should know (as you're assuming);
she just happens to not know bash and run into some obstacle learning it, but appropriate training would make her able to contribute. In which case, the (wrong) assumption "how could one possibly not get that by oneself" acts as a form of bullying. In fact, since women and minorities are less likely to know Unix culture, this attitude can easily be a source of discrimination (see Philip Guo's post).

And my HPCC experience was full of bash-like tools with similar problems. (You only mention bash once, and bash is a bad offender, but lots of this answer is more generally valid).

Whoever does programming knows this is a "teach-yourself" skill. Everytime a problem arises, you search the wealth of tutorials and guides in Internet, you ask in an specialized forum and the last resource is to consult a colleague (everybody is very occupied with its own business).

I've learned programming that way (up to Linux-kernel-hacking level, in case you're tempted to dismiss me), but that's not the only one. For all skills, teachers exist to help overcome "teach yourself" obstacle.

[...] She seems unable to go beyond very basic commands like executing a for loop in a BASH script.

Does she ignore languages she was taught in her courses, or does she have trouble getting bash? In the second case, I have news for you: it's extremely easy to be a genius and not get bash. I'm a PhD student who does get bash, surrounded by many smart students who get it less, in a programming languages lab.
One key problem is that bash violates so many unconscious assumptions that are valid in "sensible" programming languages—for instance, by lacking a parser. So that forgetting any space in if [ -f "$i" ]; then will result in unhelpful errors — and trying to get them will result in more frustration.
As Philip Guo explains:

There is a huge disconnect between the elegant high-level ideas discussed on the whiteboard (while presumably sipping cappuccinos) and the grimy, grungy, terrible command-line bullshittery required to set up a computing environment suitable for implementing those ideas in code. This gulf of execution is tremendously frustrating for highly-capable and motivated students who just didn't happen to spend 10,000 hours of their youth wrestling with nasty command-line interfaces.

Now, you're not supposed to teach her this stuff — the professor should check one has the skills on entry or setup training. However, I don't see how one can avoid unconsciously bullying somebody else with those misconceptions.
Now, how could it be that she has an issue with the whole lab? Guo answers again:

OK here's what gets me super pissed. Many commenters presumed that “real programmers” should be command-line experts... POSIX-flavored command-line experts, to be precise.
[...]
More generally, this notion that the only “real programmers” are those who have already mastered POSIX command-line-fu before they leave the university is a dangerous one, and contributes to the continued monoculture in software-based industries.

I've had the same idea—then being a PhD student gave overwhelming contrary evidence.
EDIT: Another insightful analysis of what's hard in learning POSIX (specifically, of the "long tail" problem) appears in an analysis of a completely different problem—learning to cook for geeks. Here it is. Enjoy.

This is truly a fantastic answer, that opens our eyes to many of the unconscious biases in programming culture.

@WetLabStudent I actually feared backlash when posting (as Guo experienced). So thanks a lot, your's a literally moving comment (tears of joy coming up). And thanks for the upvotes and acceptance.

This answer, 100x. I did my undergrad in engineering and ended up running some work for my MSc on a HPC cluster. You would not believe how people in these groups look down on those of us who weren't born and raised on Linux. "What do you mean, how do you configure remote desktop access using SSH? Are you retarded?"

One experience I had (during a short encounter with HPC) is a feeling of anxiety from using up shared resources. When I am programming on a single machine, I can make loads mistakes and take lots of time without any one else's work being affected. However, when working with HPC, there is a little daemon in the back of my head reminding me that, if I don't use these resources efficiently, I am actually taking away those resources (computational nodes or what have you) from someone who could be using them much more effectively. This added a (not insignificant) amount of stress for me.

To translate that above comment - your labmate might be having a negative stress reaction because she is actually worrying too much about using computational resources (and she is expressing it in a somewhat destructive way to the rest of the lab).

@NauticalMile: yours sounds like a different experience (though, what do I know?). But I can relate to it.

While I agree with the vast majority of the post, I still find it extremely difficult to believe that a competent CS graduate is incapable of programming a for loop in bash, even if they have never touched a CLI once in their lives.

@MarchHo The OP said "go beyond very basic things like a for loop", whatever that means. I think analyzing where exactly is somebody "allowed" to fail seems pointless to me—and even counterproductive, at least if you aim to turn more people into competent CS graduates. OTOH, there's a disconnect between "competent in CS" and "CS graduate": Many graduates are not "competent" (with the definition you seem to have in mind, of which I see the point) and that's education's fault. Some people learn CS, but we don't know yet how to teach it well to others — see Alan Kay at http://bit.ly/1ln6YHA.

I must have misread OP's post the first time! Thanks for the interesting read

In fact, since women and minorities are less likely to know Unix culture,...- [Citation needed]

@thethickofit: That's also from the link (http://www.pgbovine.net/command-line-bullshittery.htm). Direct quote:

Even worse, I will be exhibiting biases against women and minorities, who are much less likely to have childhood exposure to POSIX command-line culture due to a lack of role models coming from that culture.

Of course not the strongest evidence in the world.

One reason I learned Perl is that I didn't want to mess around with bash, sh, csh, zsh and whatever other dialects went around with their weird treatment of virtually everything. Plus, you got sed and awk in a coherent framework, for free. The reason I stopped doing Perl was when I realised that Perl is a write-only language; I spent too much time to easily read and modify one of my own larger scripts (I am usually a pretty 'clean' writer); but that was many years later.

I will try to present yet another approach than the ones in the answers above. I don't consider it a definite solution, rather a way to go that may work for someone and may not for someone else. (And also, I would much more prefer to speak to someone higher-up, if you can; that's what the other answers discuss.)

The thing is: Be honest, but without judging the other person's qualities at all. I had been in such a situation before: person coming to me with simple problems that fall in the "googlable" or "in every book" or "in every course" or "in every tutorial" category, again and again.
The honest answer was, for me at least: Well, we have discussed a similar thing before. I'm sorry but I have got other things to do as well. I'm willing to help you with the burdens, but please, try to [point out some good resources here] before approaching me, and if you approach me, please make it specific enough so that we don't lose too much time solving the problems.
It is true, honest but not rude. After all, it is your time, your studies and you yourself who'll go on the market to sell your results, and you need to be productive. If this is a serious annoyance that makes your productivity drop significantly, they need to know it.

I will try this. However, every time we rejected her (kindly) or asked for further details, she gets angry and begins ranting.

@je_b  With [good resource] = Stack Overflow, you can have the community there do the culling. That said, if a person gets angry because they think they don't get the help they are entitled to, I will very firmly state my opinion of that, once, and if they continue they are no longer welcome to ask questions.

@Raphael Actually, I use the very same thing as I describe here for the cases when someone asks something in the TeX.SE chat. If it's a one-line question with a one-line answer, I'm fine. If it's complicated but interesting and I can spend the time discussing it, I'm fine. If it's not a well-prepared question, I kindly ask them to use the "Ask Question" button on the site and make it a proper question.

@je_b If she gets angry even if you are polite and you sincerely mean what you say (that you can't spend infinity of time on her problems), it is not really your issue anymore. Your issue then is only how to share the office with someone who is angry at you for "not being helpful".

This is a obviously difficult situation, perhaps in part due to being an undergraduate researcher, with an MSc candidate the subject of your question. As you said that this is starting to affect the productivity of the lab though, this is obviously a matter which may affect the PI or supervisor.
I've been faced with a similar situation before, although the dynamic was somewhat different, in that while officially of the same level as the person in question, I effectively was their mentor or "secondary unofficial supervisor". In that case, I had a duty to raise the concern with their formal supervisor (in an informal manner), to alert them to the concern. They were grateful at being alerted early to the situation, rather than being left out of the loop, although this will vary in different cases, depending on their (desired) level of involvement in the goings-on of the lab.
If someone is struggling though, I do feel that you have an academic responsibility to a colleague to offer assistance if appropriate, but that has obviously been done here, to the point of detriment of others' work.
If you have a good working relationship with the supervisor (I am presuming it is also your supervisor), you could probably bring this to their attention casually/informally, although this obviously may not be the case - I had a completely colleague-like relationship with mine, and would act as the main contact supervisor to his project students), and any problems or concerns (including with other graduate students, as I was the most experienced) would be raised. In that case however, this information was always understood to be simply to help them as much as possible.
Perhaps you could discuss the concerns with a (no doubt already aware) experienced colleague in the lab. I am presuming that there's someone who is generally looked up to for advice by those working there. I'm sure they would be happy to discuss the matter in private and advise (or perhaps talk to the supervisor if they have a good relationship with them).

Heh. Left out of the "loop".

You are a student, not a mentor, advisor, teacher, or TA. And therefore it is not your responsibility to teach other people to do their job (you can help, but only if you want so). When the time will come and your advisor will ask you to present your results, I highly doubt that "I have not finished my task, but I helped A and B to do their task" will help you.
It looks like you have done more than expected. Taking into consideration that some of your attempts were considered as bulling I would stop giving any help.
If you want to make it in a more diplomatic way and do not want to speak with your supervisor I think about two possible ways:

Start answering the questions with an increasing delay: answer the first question, for the second - tell that you need to finish some stuff and will be able to think about it in 15 minutes, the third in 1 hour and so on.
Tell that you will be able to do this tomorrow, so ask her to write her problem in an email so that you will be prepared on the next day. This way the third person (your supervisor) would be able to see whether the issues she is failing with are really trivial (who knows, maybe only you think that it is easy) and you would have a list of all problems she faced and asked your help.

If the person tells "I want it now, stop all you things and go help me", you have to explain that the word does not work this way.
P.S: But please do not assume things like this: "she lied to get accepted by our supervisor". There are a lot of explanations apart of she lied, so this is a really strong accusation.

When we explained her that we were unable to answer everything she asked when she wanted, she began saying we were bullying her. You are right, we should not assume she lied, but there is something strange in her perfomance either way.

@je_b she might have exploited other people like you to solve all her problems :-). Anyway either do not help the person at all, or use one of the two suggestions.

@je_b: just make sure you aren't bullying her and you should be OK on that score (of course nothing is ever certain). One thing I caution against, is that if she or the authorities get wind of the fact that your colleagues are openly speculating that she cheated to get into the course, and that you discussed these speculations publicly (albeit anonymously), then that might not look good for you. Knock that on the head. And anyway don't assume the admissions process is so water-tight that only a cheat can get past it without decent programming ability, because it isn't that water-tight.

Let's say you have taken the final "asked a colleague" step, what's the next source of help if that still isn't useful? It sounds like that is the action she should take.
If you are not sure yourself, then that is probably the problem. There should be another source of information past just your colleagues.
If the answer by that final source of information is, "Look it up" then support that answer yourself. Ask "Have you looked it up?" She may say she didn't find it. Ask "Have you asked on the [such and such] forum? She may say she didn't get an answer. If she has done this, and you don't know the answer yourself without looking stuff up - you can choose to either show her how you do your process for looking something up - by having her looking it up but you just tell her verbally what you would do - or refer her back to the final source of information saying, I tried looking it up but still can't figure it out.

Most people like to "take control of the keyboard" to teach, but that is probably a poor teaching method for her. Guide her if you choose too, but don't do it for her.
Is she asking the same questions over a particular process? Have her write it down somewhere safe and then if she asks again, refer her to the notes. She may not realize everybody doesn't memorize everything.

I myself was a student who would be afraid to ask above the colleague level because after the first time of "Look it up" it felt like that means, "I will not help you", which is not true - they are just trying to make the best use of their and everybody's time.

To the best of my knowledge, we have done exactly what your refer. Despite it might seems, the atmosphere in our lab cooperative (that why I say We, instead of I). We sat next to her to plan the scripts in paper, let her write, ask her question so she figure out why something is not working. We never give final solutions, but help each other with strategies and recommendations. She might rise questions to our supervisor, but that is something we cannot force her to do.

Does she end up talking through it by herself, but just need someone there to speak with? If so, maybe she needs a rubber ducky. Is there a certain concept she is not getting? Otherwise it sounds like she does learn but just doesn't ask for help how you wish she would, or asks more often than you would like. It's okay to say, "I'm busy now, but I can try to help you [another time]."

I would say there are concepts she is not getting. She is still in the same piece of code she began with a week ago. Speaking about the rubber duck, when we ask her: What this line do? Most of the times she is unable to communicate what was she trying to attempt or understand the warnings, e.g. She was trying to run a program X, the computer said "The program X is not installed", and she continued thinking there was a mistake in the code.

@je_b That sounds as if she has serious computer usage deficiencies (from the perspective of a job that involves programming). It's not your job to fix that. One can argue whether it's hers, but that goes well beyond "help out a colleague".

Be careful about the bullying part. Even if it's completely unfounded, if she complains about bullying to a supervisor or even the department, you will have to explain yourself. And if people believe her but not you, you are in trouble. There is no guarantee that people make sensible judgments.
If you raise the issue with a supervisor in a way that leaves a paper trail, you are not only doing something to address the immediate situation, you are also protecting yourself from a situation that is much worse than the current one.
Also keep in mind that communication is tricky. If you say "she starts mumbling expecting that someone will approach and solve the problem for her", then that is almost certainly not the way she experiences this. Involving a third party (the supervisor) can resolve communication issues, or mismatching expectations.

This person sounds like a real-world help vampire.  The problem is, you don't have the buffer of an SE site to prevent her vampirism, and she seems to have learned very well how to leech help off of those around her - recognizing that her muttering will get people to pay attention to her, if for no other reason than to stop it, and knowing that repeatedly asking the same question will get people to eventually just do the work for her.
This is an entirely unhealthy habit on her part, and you should do everything you can to not feed into it.  Don't help her unless it is absolutely necessary.  Don't offer to write any script for her.  Don't direct her to anything but the most basic of search engines.  You may even want to consider playing dumb if she insists on you giving her help, and if that doesn't work, then consider asking for or sitting in a different seat (I can't imagine you have assigned seating at the Graduate level, but if you do you should be able to ask the professor for a change of seating).
Above all else though, do not feel guilty about cutting yourself off from this person.  They may try, very effectively, to guilt trip you into offering help, but do not feed into it.  As you said, this is a class where it is expected that the student will do a lot of self-teaching (and I hope that's true, or else she should be asking the professor, not you, for help) and she's going to have to learn, the hard way, that self-teaching means exactly that - finding a way to teach yourself.

I didn't know about the term, but applies precisely to her. Your link is very interesting, I am going to read it carefully.

@je_b It's an SE thing - basically the sort of SE user who asks very simple, easy-to-answer questions with little research, and expects high-quality answers in return, usually without providing any feedback, or explicitly holding feedback back until answers are provided, then editing the question drastically because 'that's not what I wanted'.

@Zibbobz. I'm sure I remember reading an article about help vampires before SE existed.

There are several good answers here already. For example, be honest with her. I really like this idea but it might not work for a simple reason:
No matter how hard you try, if there is no will to change on her side, you will not succeed. There is one person who can force her to change her attitude and that is of course your supervisor. I think safest solution here is to let the supervisor know about the situation and let him/her handle the situation.
The point is, you are in a tough situation and I encourage you to act very wisely. You need to consider few aspects carefully.
For instance, be mindful of sexist behavior/bullying/humiliating. I am not saying that you are being patronizing or any other accusations. However, experience is telling me these types of situations have good potentials for misinterpretations. For this reason, I believe it is wise to handle this situation through the senior staff sooner or later.
The rather difficult part here, is how bring this situation to your supervisor's attention. Perhaps you can directly tell them about the situation and ask them to handle it. This highly depend on the relationship you have with you supervisor and your position in the lab. Be sure that he/she knows that you have done more than enough to solve the situation in the lab.
Another solution would be involve the supervisors indirectly. For instance next time she comes with a new question, ask her to email it to you and CC the supervisor. If the answer to the question is very trivial your supervisor will automatically be alerted about the quality of new msc candidate. A better scenario would be that she will try to solve the problem herself, when she face the case of supervisor's involvement. You should carefully and delicately pass her to the supervisor.
Couple of notes:

She might be in a hard situation as well. New programming paradigm, new person in the town, just coming from bachelor, feeling a bit vulnerable, etc. Maybe, just maybe, she is actually trying.
Do NOT assume she is lying. You are not in a position to judge her and this is a very strong accusation and quite unprofessional.

I think this calls for some serious talking with all the parties involved, including your supervisor.
One possible approach to keep things civilised and without pointing fingers, is to set up a private chat for the lab, and everybody asks through that. This way, you don't interrupt anyone asking a question, and potentially anybody can answer you. This also gives some broad exposure to the questions (maybe you didn't know that one of the new people to join the group is an expert in the technology you have a question about, and you wouldn't have asked him).
Applied to your particular case, it creates a paper trail of her questions, spreads the load among more people, and forces her to think about the question (I managed to answer a couple of questions I had while writing them on Stack Overflow). When she asks in person, politely point her to the chat, where she will get the answers. It is important that you make this a firm rule, with no exceptions.
If she still refuses to use this chat, you change your subjective complaint (she asks too many too basic questions) to a very objective one (she is not asking through the chat).

Be careful, though. If you create a private chat for questions, and then nobody pays any attention to it because it's full of her questions, and then you sometimes slip and ask your own question out loud to a colleague instead of through the chat, then you probably in point of fact are bullying her. So if you make rules for her to avoid her wasting your time then as a bare minimum you must follow them absolutely scrupulously yourself. You'd also need to consider whether the rules are targeting her, there's such a thing as an unfair, bullying rule and this must be avoided.

Suppose she asks you how to open a file in Python.  Rather than telling her about the "open" command, go to her computer and google "how to open a file in Python."  She'll quickly learn that she should be asking Google instead of you.
If her question requires more than 30 seconds of thought for you to answer, you can also say "I don't know, why don't you check the Internet?  Someone there will probably know the answer."

I don't know much about the interpersonal climate in your lab, but if you feel confident to solve it with humor, I can help you.
Hand her 20 question vouchers. Sounds ridiculous but worked perfectly for my daughters some years ago. 20 vouchers per day are plenty, but it forces her to think about every question. It also gives her the possibility to proof, that she isn't asking to much questions, which is smoothing her way to improve her "teach-yourself" skill.

Unfortunately, I am afraid this risks being taken as patronising. Your daughter has respect for you, and will trust you on this; this person seems to take badly when people can't help her right now.

A 13 year old girl has neither respect nor trust for her parents, but yes it was patronizing.

What you suggest is not professional and if not taken patronizing, it will definitely be considered as humiliating.

This would seem to give someone a physical proof that would sure look - to any outside party - that they are de facto being mistreated/bullied/harassed and indeed could constitute a "hostile work environment". It's about as advisable as fashioning a dunce cap. It doesn't even matter what's intended - the perception of a "reasonable person" standard could very well cause personnel, reputation, career, and/or legal problems for the person doing it.

This could work if you handed out the same number of vouchers to everyone in the lab once a semester, and just state it as your new policy that in order to answer questions you have to use these vouchers. Many people on workplace stackexchange do this, but not in a silly humorous way where you print out a ridiculous number of them per day and hand them to only one person, that indeed would be bullying.

Is she pretty?  This may sound like the most sexist question possible, but in some STEM courses/disciplines particularly with a low female quota this can be a large contributing factor to not getting used early to organizing your workloads and learning yourself.  Because those male coeds who get along well with their stuff have little better to do than fall over themselves providing help and support in study groups.
Been there, done that, got no T-shirt (800 coeds starting with me, about 16 female students among them).  Now depending on the college and courses you are in, you still need the skills and brains to pass.  There are hard limits to how far you'll get just by being someone to look at.  Which is not restricted to females, actually: it is well-known that taller and/or more self-confident men convey much more competency than their less visually gifted counterparts.  But they are less likely to be the victim of unabating "let me do as much for you as I can" attack waves.
Whatever the reasons, it is becoming apparent that she is not well-prepared for the kind of workflow she is supposed to be part of.  That does not have to mean she is dead baggage: one thing that comes to mind to me is oboists: one of the most time-consuming and exasperating part of playing that instrument is making your reeds.  As an amateur, you easily spend an hour on a reed, and then it will work any amont of time from 5 minutes to several months.  Several professional oboists have a side business of making reeds for amateurs.  You can perfectly well perform on your instrument while never making a reed yourself.  But it makes you dependent on the skills and availability of someone else.  Of course, you'd not expect another colleague in your orchestra to make your reeds without compensation.
So at any rate, it is clear that your colleague here is not able to do her work without the involvement of others.  That's a department and managing problem.  You need to get together, figure out what is missing here, figure out what is required for jump-starting her into become productive in the manner expected in your department, figure out who can help with that in what manner and what effort, and figure out how to free the resources necessary to do that.
Basically there are three possible outcomes:
a) she'll be more work than she gets done.  This will not work out, separate.
b) she'll require work on a continuing basis, but deliver more than one puts in.  This requires proper work arrangements and understandings.  One needs to evaluate whether the net benefit justifies the pay and the work disruption.
c) she can develop into a productive member of your team once she gets over the culture shock and develops the necessary skills.
It is clear that this will not work without someone originally carrying some of the weight, and the self-organizing of that does not work well.  Fingerpointing will not get this situation under control.  Actively trying to fix this on a department level will keep the cost under control, will make it clear who needs to get credit and responsibility for carrying that initial cost, and will make it clear how to assess where one is getting.
This is an unproductive and aggravating situation for all of the involved.  Conflicting plans, targets, and expectations are not going to help.

"Is she pretty? This may sound like the most sexist question possible" It's up there, yes. -1 from me.

wish I had the rep to downvote this.

I've dealt with people like the one in the original question.  All of them were male, like myself.

-1 I cringed really, really hard. What's really nauseating is after the first two paragraphs, your answer levels out and suddenly gains some clarity and potential usefulness. But this is made unreadable and unhelpful by the nonsense in the beginning, which is discriminatory and patronizing to men and women alike and somehow paints all parties as pitiful foolish victims of attractiveness and sex roles. Some people work hard, some are smart, some are skilled, some are kind, some are attractive, and some are male/female - and all these scales are almost strictly orthogonal.

I am assuming you are trolling... however, I am going to say that we have a 50/50 male/female ratio in the lab. Our supervisor is a woman. There are no sexual issue between us. Dot. -1 btw

While I do find that other answers are much more useful and right on target compared to this one, I do not think this deserves the extreme -5 score. The comments are much more paranoid than how sexist is this answer.

I think some of the arguments presented in this answer are quite relevant and likely played a part in the situation OP is describing. While we all like an ideal world where gender based biases are non-existent, they do exist in real world.

@Katen while some of the ideas later in the answer are actually reasonable, expecting anyone to read further after such a mind-blowingly offensive first 2 paragraphs is a bit unfair. -1. Previously I have never downvoted an answer with a score of -1 or worse, but I would still downvote this answer even if it already had a score of -100.


text:
How to address a professor that makes offensive comments (that they don't realize are offensive)?
I am currently in a financial accounting class with a professor that has used offensive (in my opinion) commentary in her lectures since my first exposure.
Examples of comments she makes:

Financial accounting is a class everyone should take, because it's actually useful, not like forced electives such as sociology. (Whether or not you believe income statements and balance sheets are more important than understanding how and why the society around you functions, the tone of this comment was what bothered me at the time.)
Boys are bad at wearing work clothes for work instead of nice clothes.
Girls treat their clothes better because they find them more precious.
Woman have a shopping gene.
It's implied that women (or moms) do all the shopping and cooking.

I admit that I don't attend class often enough to know whether this is a pervasive or sporadic issue. I just know I've been put off enough to not attend classes more often and find out. I make up not going to her lectures by putting in extra effort other ways.
I can tell that she's not trying to be offensive. Her comments are meant to come off as motherly and humorous. I'm also not trying to be offended, as I gain nothing from that.
What is the most diplomatic way of addressing issues with a professor when you're in a large lecture hall setting? (As opposed to small classroom settings, which lend themselves to more personal connections with the instructors)
Or
How would a professor prefer I address them if I were dissatisfied with the nature of their off topic commentary? (As opposed to opinionated comments that relate to the course or field, such as economic policy preferences in a economics course)

Should I send a polite email to the professor explaining that I wasn't comfortable? It's quick and semi-anonymous. She won't be able to associate the name with my face. Presenting myself in an impersonal matter may result in an impersonal response.
Should I wait until the end-of-semester course evaluations and express my concerns? These are completely anonymous, but seems passive aggressive and rather too far after the fact.
Should I approach her directly if it happens again? It's more personal, but that can also seem to be more confrontational (especially if I go out of my way to meet her during office hours). I don't feel it's confrontational, or that I would present myself that way, but people receiving critique can feel that way.
Is there a better solution?

Switching sections isn't any more preferable than skipping the current lectures. The other available times didn't work well for me or my family on a regular basis. I'm also not sold that it's the best option for most students in a similar situation. I would see changing sections as a recourse only if other methods failed, or the lecturer was wildly offensive.
While the first class bothered me, I didn't drop attendance immediately. This was done after getting a feel for the course, when I knew I could balance not being in the lectures. It wasn't a knee-jerk "How dare she!" reaction.
Spotty attendance is admittedly doing nothing to address the issue. Thus, my inquiry.

I rarely attend the lectures [...], with these types of comments being the main reason for my chosen absence: — You say that you can tell she isn't trying to be offensive, and yet you don't attend the lectures due to her remarks? It seems plausible (to me, anyway) that you may be looking for a reason not to attend the lectures. Also, it's a tough, cut-throat world out there: growing some thicker skin may be your best option.

@MadJack Her commentary and non-material specific discussions can run quite long. I have no problems with attending the lectures. I've allocated that time and I've paid the money to be there.  This isn't a matter of thick skin or being easily offended. This is an instructor that has influence over a large number of young minds, and is nonchalantly   reinforcing gender stereotypes. And if I faced these types of comments in the workplace, I would address my colleague or superior directly, but in those situations I usually have at least some relationship with the other person.

@MadJack And if I could give you a -1 for comments, I would. The idea that we should just let people get away with sexism is part why gender inequality continues to exist.

@CreationEdge  In this situation you do have a relationship with this person.  She is your professor.  You should feel free to complain about any aspect of the class to her.  (You should also feel free to mention it on the course evaluations, or to ignore it as Mad Jack says.)

@TrevorWilson That's not really a relationship, outside of some record keeping. I agree that I should feel free to complain, but I'm interested in the best course of action, as in: which is the least disruptive way to effect maximum change; or failing that: the most professional way to address it?

@CreationEdge What, exactly, do you envision as the perfect outcome here? Her termination? Attending Gender Studies classes? What do you expect the true outcome to be? If she is a Professor and not a TA, I'm not sure there is anything you can do to effect change in her behavior. Perhaps simply meet with her during office-hours and spell out your unease with her and don't take anything else of she teaches.

@CGCampbell I was hoping to draw upon the experience of the community for an answer. I've not dealt with offensive comments from  instructors over the past 3+ years of college. I suppose if just letting her know someone doesn't appreciate her comments is the best outcome I can expect, then I'll be satisfied with that and just send her a polite email.

I just meant that she, as a professor, has an important relationship to her students in general, not to you in particular.  She ought to take your complaints seriously, so let's give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she would.  Anyway, I wouldn't say there is one particular "best course of action" here.

I have taken all of your comments into consideration, and altered the nature of the question. I hope these changes make it a better question that makes it more applicable to a larger number of students.

At least the first example you list (the remark about sociology) sounds like the usual bickering between fields (that in most situations, one could understand as humorous). It might depend on the actual words used, though.

I understand how some of the comments could be found as sexist but I think she's really making more of a generalization or pointing out a stereotype rather than intentionally being offensive or sexist, Although these really aren't things that should be discussed in a class about financial account. Also the one about sociology is pretty tame compared to the stuff the science and math departments say about each other and pretty much every other department.

An update, FWIW. Nothing happened. Big life events made this small potatoes. I didn't attend any more, all material/work was online. Aced class, moved on. Forgot about it until a random vote. Still unsure how to approach this during a large lecture, but I'm done with those, so it's largely academic at this point. I think my specific examples got in the way, as there seems to have been a lot of discussion of whether or not they were offensive, and not a lot about what to do under the assumption that an instructor is unintentionally saying offensive things.

I'm afraid you lose a lot of my sympathy by complaining about a lecture that you rarely attend.  I don't really understand what you mean by "the luxury of other options".  If you can take the class from a different instructor and would prefer to do that, do it.  If the attendance in the lecture is not required and you feel that you can get what you want out of the course without attending the lectures: that's your choice too, but is it a good choice?
You seem to be prioritizing sociopolitical beliefs over the material of the course.  It's very easy to be offended if you want to be.  I won't comment on the gender stuff, but I will say that the bit about accounting over sociology really doesn't rate as an "offensive" comment.  I think it's true that accounting is a more practical field than sociology and that most American adults need to do some accounting in their daily lives in a way that they do not need to do sociology.  Not knowing how interest and loans work will have a more direct negative effect on most people than not understanding the difference between mechanical and organic solidarity.  Of course "practical" is not necessarily better: it is a matter of taste and goals.  I am a mathematician, I have taken courses in sociology but not accounting, and I am fully content with that decision: in fact, I would be hard-pressed to imagine a university course that sounds less interesting to me than accounting.  But that's just my own personal taste: the idea that the accounting instructor prefers accounting over sociology is neither offensive nor even surprising.  We have a right to like what we do better and tell that to students.
Not everyone has the same views that we do.  But an accounting instructor's views on gender, shopping and clothing seem incidental rather than professional: it is very unlikely that she is pushing these views on the students or that she is holding herself up as an authority figure on them; they're just part of the way that she likes to present her lectures.  Ask yourself this: what are the negative effects of her expression of these views?  Is it likely that the men and women in the class will adjust their own behavior or views in accordance with hers?  Will men feel worried about their own cooking and shopping agency?  It just doesn't sound that insidious to me.
In my opinion, if you disagree with the views and feel strongly that the lectures would be improved by not sharing them, then have the courage of your convictions and convey this to the instructor, either in person or by email during the class, or after the class is over.  But not attending the lecture because you don't like the incidental views that the instructor expresses?  I'm sorry to say that I don't find that to be a very mature reaction.  In so doing you are compromising your own educational experience in exchange for...what, exactly?  What is anyone gaining by your failure to attend the lectures?
Added: If from the first day of class you have a problem with the instructor which is severe enough that you can only bring yourself to attend the class sporadically because of it, you have an excellent reason to drop the course or change sections right away.  Staying in a course with an instructor that you find personally offensive doesn't seem like a very good plan.  In fact, if you tell your advisor that you want to change sections for this reason, you can probably get additional help with the particulars of that: it is in everyone's best interest for you to take a different course.

I can attend other lectures or study sessions, or just study on my own during that time. I'm not compromising my education, and am putting in the extra effort necessary to compensate for not being at my assigned lectures.  Anyway, I'm not looking for sympathy. I was hoping to get professional responses, hopefully from professors with insights into how'd they want a student in my shoes to respond. I don't lack courage, I'm just unfamiliar with the milieu of academia that can sometimes be very different from larger social norms. I want to be tactful and use the proper format.

"I can attend other lectures or study sessions" I know.  Are you?  You wrote: ". If it weren't for these types of comments, I would attend her lectures over these other options."  This sounds like you are compromising something.  Or do you just mean that it would be more convenient to attend the lecture you are signed up for?

It would be more convenient, yes. My other courses, study times, and work schedule were all planned around how each of my courses fit together for a condensed schedule that also works for my family. Anything but that schedule is inconvenient, which is why I'm in that particular section. I wouldn't let an instructor's comments affect my success. If the course were more demanding, required teamwork, or had graded attendance, necessitating my presence, I would have addressed this earlier in the semester.

I can appreciate that you are in a situation with little flexibility and that you have other demands on your time and energy.  In this situation, it honestly seems to me that the easiest thing is just to go to the class and ignore everything that isn't directly relevant to the course material.  Wouldn't that be the most convenient and least disruptive thing to do?

That's my plan from here on out. I'd rather be back on the set schedule I signed up for. But, I still feel the need to address the issue in some way, especially if it continues. I might be the only student that's bothered by this, but today I heard a female student directly behind me scoff in response to the shopping gene comment. I don't know if she scoffed at the idea of a woman not liking shopping, or the idea that woman would have such a "gene",  but it led me to think I might not just be a curmudgeon.

+1 for "have the courage of your convictions and convey this to the instructor". Most instructors would not take personal offense as long as your conversation was kept civil and non judgmental "Hi professor X, I know you mean no offense when you say X Y and Z in your lectures but these comments personally make me feel uncomfortable. Would it be possible to not make comments about gender in the future; I'd really appreciate it." Of course such a conversation works better prior to stop attending the course.

Hypothetically, if this question was posted by a female asker about a male lecturer, would you be recommending the same thing?

You're a postgraduate student. You and the professor are both academics. And you're both grown-ups.
So have a grown-up, informed, intelligent conversation with her about this. Pick her up on it during a seminar or lecture, when it happens. Do it intelligently. Use your academic skills. Build a point up concisely from literature and reason. You should be able to do that in three sentences with some thought; have other literature to hand to back up your discussion, after the lecture.
The lecturer started the disruption: If a lecturer is perpetuating nonsense such as "shopping genes" and women's role being cooking and shopping, that needs challenging. Do it at the moment it occurs: it really is the best time to catch it. When people use stereotypes that reinforce existing hegemonies, they often don't even realise they're doing it. Catching it in the moment gives them an opportunity to reflect. Postgraduate education can be much more versatile, more flexible than undergraduate - it can be open to broadening out and extending discussions.
If we were talking about undergraduates in large groups then the disruption to the lecture might be inappropriate, just as the lecturer's sexism is: but we don't deal with that sort of undergraduate question here, so the only way to make this question useful is to deal with it as a question about a postgraduate degree. And in such cases, there is a much more level playing field between lecturer and students: learning is a collaboration.
A large part of a postgraduate degree is independent study and thought. So show some.

I don't think the lecture would be an appropriate time to "Build a point up concisely from literature and reason" about sexism, given that the class is about accounting and not anything remotely related to sex roles in society.  (The professor may have started it, but I don't think that's a good reason to waste everyone else's time further by going off on a tangent, even a concise one.)  I think an e-mail or office visit would be a better way to raise the complaint.

While I agree that intelligent conversation could be beneficial, I don't agree that disrupting or waylaying the learning of the other 200+ students in the lecture is an appropriate course of action. We wouldn't be discussing the course. Also, I'm an undergraduate, not that I believe that should make a difference.

I will also chime in that a dramatic (even if well-sourced) "J'accuse!" moment in a lecture with hundreds of students seems like a poor idea.  I don't think that the OP needs to "academize" his concern: citing literature to refute the "shopping gene" to an accounting professor...there is some real passive aggression here.  I made a remark about Meghan Trainor vs. Iggy Azalea in a class last week.  If someone wants to say they wish I didn't make that (obviously irrelevant) remark, just say it.  Don't quote me a paper about ethnomusicology!

@PeteL.Clark I don't know of any postgraduate module with hundreds of students, but that's not to say they don't exist - I guess they probably do somewhere. But I don't know of any postgraduate lecturer that would reject a mature, considered intervention on an issue that could alienate half the students. I don't know what an Iggy Azalea is, but we've got quite alkaline soils, so I don't suppose it would flourish here anyway.

Law school classes can be this large, for instance.  The point is that during class is not the ideal time to raise an issue that has nothing to do with the course material.    I have to agree with the OP that the under/graduate distinction does not seem relevant here.  If someone wanted to have an academic discussion on a subject outside of mathematics during my mathematics lecture, I would almost certainly reject it (by telling them to talk to me about it outside of class).

I realize now that I HAVE had a similar experience in the past with an instructor, but it was over 3 years ago and the it was a much smaller course where the interaction with other students and the instructor was far greater. The instructor was being abrasive and allowing some students to be overly vocal in their negativity about another student. In that course, I was more comfortable with the setting and called the instructor out on it in front of the whole class. She gave us a break, apologized, thanked me for checking her. There were no other events before or after, though. 1/2

So I do agree that in some instances, mid-class corrections or interruptions can be the best solution. It that case, things went well and the whole atmosphere of the class improved. But, in my current case I may or may not be the only one affected, I have no personal connection to my classmates or instructor, and feel that I would likely be the cause of a negative atmosphere by interjecting in this case. So, this could be an answer for some students in some classes, but it isn't the answer for me. 2/2

@PeteL.Clark While I agree that a private conversation is best, pointing it out during lecture, in real time, is appropriate if the student has enough courage to do so. Of course it should be a simple, one liner "I'd personally really appreciate it if we didn't make comments about gender in this class" is much better than lecturing the professor about sexism with specific examples from the literature in front of the class.

If the language is sexist (and your examples are) file an official complaint or grow a pair.  Don't whine, no-one wants to hear it and it just makes you sound foolish.
Many women don't understand how sexist and rude their language and behaviour is, and you don't have to put up with the abuse anymore than they have to put up with flirt/pickup orientated abuse in class.

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text:
Is it fair to blame authors for exorbitant book costs?
Summary (TL;DR): The following's biased; so are there any counterarguments? Please beware that this question concerns only authors who are professors and who also write textbooks.
Are authors truly helping students as much as possible? For example, are textbooks edited and revised every two years out of greed? Certain subjects tied to real-life reforms (like law) may require such turnover, but what of Economics (as below) or Calculus?

[Supplementary Context] [Source:] Ray Lopez December 16, 2014 at 12:22 pm
LOL from the comments section of the npr post:

Mankiw is the worst sort of economist. He’s a blatant liar. Why does his book cost $320? Because that’s how much the publisher, Cengage, has determined the market will bear. Why does he not advocate reducing the price of the book to make it affordable to more students around the world? Because he wants to make as much money for himself as possible. (This is also why pharmaceutical companies often price their newest drugs at outrageously high prices; to maximise profits in the short term, rather than to deliver the greatest public health good.) Mankiw does not care about the impact of his ridiculously priced book on the purchasers of his product, and he papers over any twinge of guilt he might otherwise experience by convincing himself that his personal brilliance is worth the extra money. Congratulations, professor, for playing your little part in the grand national pastime of burying America’s college students in debt.

(no sympathy from me as he dissed outrageously priced on-patent drugs, but it’s telling how people think education is a public good. Nothing can be further from the truth. If you can’t afford an Ivy League education you have no business applying to Harvard…)

I am personally familiar with at least two cases (in mathematics) where authors were angry that their books were expensive, and fought (mostly unsuccessfully) with the publishers to keep the prices down. Or, at least, this is what these authors claimed, and they seemed sincere to me.

Many textbooks, tend to be expensive to print, and manufacture.
Large pages, colour, gloss. Hardcover and hundreds of pages long.
Nicely layedout, and edited.
I suspect you will find that the profit margins on many books are much smaller than one might think.
Even just running the numbers to print-off a black and white textbook at the University printshop (from an electronic edition) may maths priced it at fairly similar to the cost to order the book from overseas.

I don't understand what the question exactly is here, but in any case it seems subjective and argumentative. Both alone would be sufficient reasons for a closing vote, so I am casting one. On top of that, an additional -1 for using your username field for self-advertising -- that was unheard of for me.

Hardcover and hundreds of pages long. Nicely layedout, and edited. I suspect you will find that the profit margins on many books are much smaller than one might think. — Clearly you've never been to the discount section at Barnes & Noble, which is full of nicely laid out, glossy, full color, large-format hardback books priced at roughly $2/kg.

@Oxinabox At my university we have very few textbooks printed inside, they usually run in the 20-50 bucks price range. An outside printed book is 100+. Don't compare the price you pay per page to print something to the cost per page to the University to print hundreds of books.

[...] are textbooks edited and revised every two years [...]? Some are and some are not.

Short answer: both yes and no.
Partially, no they are not responsible, because some of it is a matter of costs and markets.  You're never going to see textbooks offered for the same price-per-page as romance novels, because the cost of creating and curating the textbook is so different.  So the base price of textbooks is expected to be significantly higher.
At the same time, however, authors have a lot of choice which publisher to work with, and some publishers are much more predatory in their pricing than others.  Most significantly, there are a number of university and society presses that can give a book quite good promotion and also a reasonable price.  Consider, for example, the MIT Press, and these widely used books: the CLR(S) Algorithms textbook ($70) and the SICP programming textbook ($49) and also free.  Moreover, academic publishing is a seller's market, unlike fiction publishing: in my experience, big academic publishers are always soliciting for authors to create books for them, and so there is space for an author to select (if not necessarily negotiate).
I would say, than, that any author who has courage of their convictions with regards to education can make a publishing choice that keeps their textbook well under $100 US.  Doing otherwise demonstrates either that the person is not caring about student costs or else that they think like an economist.

Ahem.

@JeffE And I congratulate you, sir, for keeping your textbook well under $100, to the limit cost of $0. :-)  I still hold that if you were distributing physical copies, you'd likely end up with a higher price-per-page than self-published romance novels.

@JeffE A $0 text AND you have a .WTF domain for it? Glorious.

@Jeff - spelling mistake in the second sentence of the first page ("wtih notes").  Should charge more and hire an editor. :-P  Just kidding. Love this!

Academic authors typically receive very very little, if any, of the cover price. And an author has very little leverage over their publisher. Many publishers would be either bemused or amused by an author telling them how to do their job. I expect to receive zero financial compensation from books, as that seems to be the going rate here. If the author receives 4-6% of a book's cover price, that gives the author scope to reduce the price by 4-6% by foregoing their royalties. But a one-off cost reduction of 4-6% is not really worth having the discussion about, is it?
Well-produced books take the time of many skilled professionals to do the work of co-ordination, editing, layout and printing; then there's the material costs, distribution and marketing, and overheads. Only a few dozen copies may get sold. So there are a lot of fixed costs to be distributed over a few sales.
It's rather different to an amateur publisher knocking out a pdf. (Not you, dear reader, if you publish your own books, do all your own editing and layout: I'm sure that's of the same quality as something from the OUP; here I'm talking about the other amateur publishers - the one's who think they're professional-grade editors and graphic designers, but, well, aren't.)
And it's a market. Supply and demand. If the book's worth $320 buy it; and if it's not, don't. Students still have a choice. They can choose the course with a $320 book, or a different course. If you're getting taught by Mankiw himself, I'd expect the $320 to be (1) a tiny part of your total costs; (2) tiny compared to your expected future earnings increment resulting from your education; (3) tiny compared to the value you get out of it.
The discussion about education as a public good, and the economic & social impacts of student debt, are a distraction, a red herring, for this particular question on this site. Those are important discussions; but we don't do discussion here, and book costs are tiny compared to tuition fees.

I think that in the internet era, if a professor is expecting to make no money out of a book and requires the material for a course, he/she may very well make it available on an online repository as a PDF. You can achieve very nice results using Latex.

For instance, the answer here estimates that Springer authors get about 5-7% of the retail price.  That may or may not meet someone's definition of "very very little"; on a $320 book we are talking $16-$22.  Of course, authors of particularly lucrative titles might negotiate higher royalty rates.

The problem with the "supply and demand" argument is that once a professor makes a textbook required, the students are a captive market.  Even if the book itself isn't worth $320, passing the class probably is.  It's a market, but not really a free one: the publisher has a monopoly on that title, the demand is highly inelastic, and there are no substitute goods.

@Miguel  we have other questions dealing with the ethics of pricing of books that are required reading for courses. This is a different question.

@NateEldredge ^ . And the students still have a choice. They can choose the course with a $320 book, or a different course. If you're getting taught by Mankiw himself, I'd expect the $320 to be (1) a tiny part of your total costs; (2) tiny compared to your expected future earnings increment resulting from your education; (3) tiny compared to the value you get out of it.

For what it is worth, author royalties on an undergraduate textbook from a commercial publisher would tend to be in the range of 12%-20% of wholesale price.

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text:
How can I convince the university to apply security upgrades to the online learning system?
In my university, we've been using Moodle for many years (>5y). There was a general negative opinion on the Moodle for very different reasons, from "it's ugly" to "it's not up to date", going through "everyone thinks it's crap, me too". Since 2 years I've been pushing the staff to update it, and hopefully fix all the concerns raised by the student and staff using it; and more importantly, fix all security issues that have been patched in the 7 new versions. (We're using version 1.9, and the latest release is 2.8).
At the beginning of this year, a new staff responsible for coordinating the teaching, set up Google ClassRoom as a mean to fix the general issue that people were not happy with the Moodle. But leaving the security issue of the Moodle which is still used as Google ClassRoom doesn't provide everything Moodle provided.
Eventually, an administrative staff worked the estimates on how much it would cost to perform the upgrade, and everything is ready to be updated. We just need the permission of one or two people, who keep saying that it can wait, or that's not the priority, and security issues are not really an issue.
How can I convince people to update Moodle? Am I paranoid on the security issue?

I have taken the liberty of rewording your question on the security update. I have tried to keep your original intent as much as possible, feel free to revert some of these changes if I got anything wrong. I have also remove the part comparing Moodle and Google Classroom because it is a different question that should be, at least, asked independently (and is borderline OT, in my opinion).

@Davidmh, thanks for the rewording. I thought Google ClassRoom was relevant since it's also what makes the process slower, but you're right, it was a bit OT the way I formulated. I just add back the fact that it exists.

A white-hat way to point out security issues is to do a cost-benefits analysis. Show the inherent costs of upgrade vs the potential damages from not upgrading.

How can you convince the higher authorities that security holes are a risk? Read up on the vulnerabilities and send them a list of concrete examples. No "an attacker could gain access to the database", but "someone could hack in and change all the passwords, and on the internet you can find a script to do this [link]". Your word may not carry much weight, so try to get the tech guys to sign it too.
Another option is to find a security expert at the CS department. They should be able to put a stronger, more authoritative word.
Of course, do not attack the server yourself, even if you don't change anything. That is more likely to upset people and backfire. But you could suggest the tech support to do it themselves as proof.


text:
How big are Mathematics research projects usually?
I have been involved in a number of large-ish research consortia usually with 10 or more groups, with each group containing 2 or more individuals. Some have originated from computer science, others engineering, and even the social sciences. In general all have contained partners from a variety of disciplines.
I'm curious as to how large mathematics research projects tend to be? Do they tend to be smaller, with individuals rather than research groups and/or subject matter experts involved. Are there any mathematical research associates out there that could offer insight into this please?
EDIT: Just to clarify, if P is a project, the "size" of P I'm interested in is:
|P|=Total number of people involved.

It depends on what you mean by "projects", but there are both large and small ones.
There are both casual collaborations between two or three individuals, which translate to a single paper, and which can be funded individually (there are grants as small as 1k USD or less, the money for a single visit or a conference participation), and larger ones that can let you hire multiple people for several years (e.g., the EU grants called ERC, which can give six-digit amounts).
I have also seen even larger "projects", but they were usually structured as mini-funding agencies, giving out their funding to smaller individual research endeavours.

So would it be possible in mathematics to have a successful career soley being involved in these small "projects"?, i.e. 1-3 individuals.

@pbs Definitely yes. Mathematics has very little lab expenses, so there is much less need for a single, coherent source of funding. A mathematician's career can revolve around single-name papers and casual temporary collaborations with colleagues met at conferences.

But of course (except for exceptional people like Erdös), in addition to these research projects, you would have a teaching position to provide your salary.

It's rare for a large number of mathematicians to collaborate on a single project.  The vast majority of mathematics papers have 1, 2 or 3 authors.
Using the techniques described in Getting a dump of arXiv metadata, I downloaded metadata for all the math preprints on arXiv, and had a script count the number of authors.  I got the following results:
251459 papers
0 authors:      1 papers         0.0004%
1 authors:      101926 papers    40.5338%
2 authors:      89630 papers     35.6440%
3 authors:      43290 papers     17.2155%
4 authors:      12555 papers     4.9929%
5 authors:      2949 papers      1.1728%
6 authors:      700 papers       0.2784%
7 authors:      216 papers       0.0859%
8 authors:      102 papers       0.0406%
9 authors:      40 papers        0.0159%
10 authors:     14 papers        0.0056%
11 authors:     9 papers         0.0036%
12 authors:     7 papers         0.0028%
13 authors:     4 papers         0.0016%
14 authors:     2 papers         0.0008%
15 authors:     3 papers         0.0012%
16 authors:     2 papers         0.0008%
20 authors:     1 papers         0.0004%
22 authors:     3 papers         0.0012%
23 authors:     1 papers         0.0004%
28 authors:     1 papers         0.0004%
37 authors:     1 papers         0.0004%
60 authors:     1 papers         0.0004%
67 authors:     1 papers         0.0004%

I took a look at some of the outliers.  Some are ordinary papers but some are other kinds of collective works.  Note that some appear to be cross-listed under other arXiv sections.

0 authors: arXiv:1005.0836 (placeholder for a preprint deleted because it was a duplicate)
20 authors: arXiv:1011.1764 (regular paper)
22 authors: arXiv:1403.2953 (review article)
22 authors: arXiv:1501.02155 (regular paper, computer-aided proof project)
22 authors: arXiv:cs/9909001 (report on the results of a workshop)
23 authors: arXiv:quant-ph/0701168 (regular paper)
28 authors: arXiv:1009.4134 (regular paper)
37 authors: arXiv:1001.4737 (regular paper but seems closer to physics)
60 authors: arXiv:math/0406190 (list of open problems collected from a workshop)
67 authors: arXiv:1410.0719 (extended abstracts from a conference)

To the asker: There may be some ambiguity here based on what we think of as a "project" and "people involved", and how research is conducted in our fields.  As a mathematician, I think of a "project" as a concerted effort by a researcher, or group of researchers, actively working to resolve a specific mathematical question.  If this effort is successful, it normally results in one or more published papers (sometimes three or four, but usually not dozens), and all the researchers who significantly contributed to the solution will be authors of those papers.  If it's a two-author paper, then there really were only two people working on that project.  (Of course, there could have been other unrelated groups working on the same question, or something closely related, but they would normally publish separately.)  So to me, there is a pretty close correspondence between "project" and "paper".
You might also find this question interesting: How do mathematicians conduct research?

Thank you, that's interesting data. From my current perspective I'm not sure if number of authors is the best indicator though. For example, although my group (of size 3) is involved in a larger consortium we would only publish our own work under our names - unless of course someone else had helped with the work. It will be interesting to see the results of your larger datasets though ! This might be getting to the essence of my question: are maths research "projects" usually small (1-2 individuals involved), and as you say it is rare for more than 3 to collaborate.

+1, really curious to see more of these data when you update (and also very curious about the 22 author paper!)

Nate, I have already downloaded it and feel free to use them is it could save some of your time: all math metadata turned into csv and all metadata xml dumps.

@AruRay: Updated!

@PiotrMigdal: Thanks very much for the offer.  I had already finished downloading it myself, but at least it was interesting to learn how that process works.

I just looked at the first. 20 authors of a 14-page paper, two and a half of which is introduction, and there doesn't seem to be any programming effort involved. I'm not nearly close enough to judge quality of that, but I'd say it's highly suspicious at the very least.

The 38 author paper is in astrophysics not math.  The 28 author paper is a real math paper, in a top journal, and it came out of an AIM workshop where the authors=participants.

How common it is for mathematicians to be officially organized in structured projects varies a lot, depending on the country, the institution, and the type of mathematics.
For pure mathematics in U.S. universities, there's practically no notion of named projects or consortia.  Just about everyone is an individual researcher, including graduate students.  You may have short or long-term collaborations, and it's common to write papers together, but there are no formal organizations behind the collaborations.  Even if a funding agency conceives of a grant as funding a specific project with PIs in charge of a group, it's not likely to be described this way in casual communication among mathematicians.  You might say "Smith and I have been working a lot on widget optimization recently", but you wouldn't describe it as the WIDGEMAX project.

Thanks for the answer. From my experience (in the UK) our group uses the names to distinguish between projects as usually there will be a number of projects either active or in the developmen stage at any one time (these are none mathematical projects). So far I like what I'm hearing about mathematical collaboration and project work.

Are you asking about projects or papers?  (You could measure how big a project is in person-hours, people/project, actual time/project, etc.)  What I think of a project may be something spanning many years (possibly most of one's career) with lots of different papers, possibly with different sets of coauthors, or it could be a single standalone paper, or something that never turns into a paper at all.  I would guess that most published research papers are pieces of a larger project that the investigator(s) are working on.  For example, this is probably true for 2/3rds or 3/4th of my papers, depending how you count.  The reason is because math is hard, and one typically can't prove what one hopes right away.
If you just are asking about number of people on papers this is easier to answer.  There are two papers of Jerrold Grossman just about math publications you may find interesting, though the information is a bit dated (particularly compared to Nate's answer, but using Mathematical Reviews data, which is more representative than the arXiv):

Patterns of Collaboration in Mathematical Research
Patterns of Research in Mathematics

These study things like trends in the number of coauthors and variation by field.  For example, from Table 3 in the first article the average number of authors/paper went from 1.1 in the 1940's to 1.63 in the 1990's, and the number of 3+ author papers went from 1% to 13%.  See also Figure 6 of the second article which has a graph.  Table 3 of the second article, breaks things down by section classifications (which are subjective, but still instructive).  Here is a sample from that table:
Section     #authors/paper   2+ authors  3+authors
CS                  1.77       53%       17.7%
Combinatorics       1.64       46%       17.7%
Statistics          1.56       45%        8.7%
Geometry            1.34       28%        4.9%
Number Theory       1.32       26%        5.0%

Note these numbers are for papers in between 1980 and 1999, so I suspect the numbers should be considerably higher now, based on the upward trends in Grossman's papers and just from what I personally see in Number Theory.  This is also supported by the data from Nate's answer.
(Edit)  I just remembered this paper (with 8 authors) which has more recent data than Grossman's (going up to 2009).  See Figs 2a and 3a, from which it's clear that there's more collaboration in applied areas.  The most recent data in there gives about 2.2 authors/paper for applied math and 1.8 for pure math. (End edit.)
For a comparative study across different disciplines, his paper of Newman is perhaps the most well known (at least to me) study.  From Table 1 we see
discipline    avg #authors/paper
biology       3.75
physics       2.53
math          1.45

Thanks for your answer. My chosen measure of project size is |P|=Total number of people involved.

Aha, this sounds much more like what  I would expect.

@NateEldredge Yes, thanks for catching the discrepancy.  (I wasn't thinking when I typed my original answer---those numbers didn't make sense at all!)


text:
Sourcing lecture notes instead of publications
I am writing an undergraduate dissertation and I have found some very good information from lecture handouts from other universities.
Will using these lecture notes compared to official publications or other dissertations reflect my dissertation in a bad light?
Of course I will source everything.

Is this an undergraduate or a postgraduate/graduate thesis dissertation?
If the later, you should not be sourcing any lecture notes/text books, and instead source journal articles or academic books (not text books) where the key concepts originally came from, or are discussed at length. I know when I was writing, I had to source from articles, and I couldn't used 'as cited in,' I had to locate the original source.

@awsoci its undergraduate

@awscoci that is highly field dependent. In some STEM fields it is considered good to cite classic text books from graduate and upper level undergraduate classes, especially if you are in one field and using a technique from another field. For example if you cited a paper from 1950 in the journal "annals of mathematics" in a biology thesis instead of the go to text book for learning that branch of mathematics, that would be considered unusual (of course citing both or citing the paper and writing "for a more gentle introduction see ..." or "for a review see..." is probably the best option).

I firmly believe that one should cite what one has used... and possibly more. To use a source and not cite it is simply dishonest and fails to give credit where it is due. At the same time, yes, one also wants official credibility, which usually entails citing refereed-journal publications (although the latter is not a promise of correctness, either). If nothing else, citing refereed-journal publications is expected, so doing it is doing what one is expected to do.
(Lecture notes are not always mere echoing of textbooks or journal articles.)
So, cite both the actual source you used, and find "cite-able" sources to accompany, so you'll be both honest (and explanatory) and "formally correct".

I agree with this, in addition, I like to go with giving the reader as much information as possible about which type of reader will be more suited for looking at which reference. For example, I like the phrasing "We used method XY and Z first developed by John Doe (credible citation). For an insightful, but less technical, review of these methods, see (citation for the less citable but more readable work you may have used)." This gives credit to where credit is due and also gives the reader a better idea for which citation they personally would rather look at.

You probably shouldn't source a concept key to your thesis from some unreviewed, posted on some website lecture notes. If the concept turns out to be wrong, the data unreproducible, or anything else comes up, your entire dissertation could be called into question.
Your best bet is to try to find a textbook or peer-reviewed publication which the author used to create the lecture notes and cite that. Look in the notes themselves for references, and then look at the publications of the author of the notes. If you don't find something in one of those places, write the author and ask them for something citable. Also, start searching the internet for related concepts. You might even ask a professional librarian at your institution for help tracking down a good source.

ok, all the key maths mathematical concepts and the "backbone" of the dissertation has come from books and papers from leading and pioneering professionals in that field. Its just a few definitions and well known concepts that I was looking up. They were explained much better.

You might be OK writing it up saying that the definitions and preliminary concepts were "adapted from lecture notes of Prof. XXXXX" and giving the citation, but I would want to see a citation to a more reliable source. It depends a little on how "well known" these concepts and definitions really are. If they are very well known, traditional even, then you are probably OK. E.g., I don't think you need to cite the definition of the derivative of a function in order to write a paper describing a numerical method for PDEs unless there's something about it core to your method. Etc.

The definitions and concepts are ancient and really well known.

Then I think you're OK adapting, paraphrasing, or otherwise reusing the explanation you found in the notes as long as you make clear that the words aren't your own with some sort of preface and cite the work as best you can. I would still write to the prof and ask if they have a more citable source.

That is exactly what I am doing. Finding explanations and then writing it in my own words and referencing everything.

This depends on the field for example in mathematics if we are talking about a useful expository piece on how to use a particular method, you should cite that piece if you used it, and also cite a peer reviewed piece as well, as per @paulgarrett's answer


text:
How to improve my capacity to follow my advisor's instructions during research?
I am a Computer Science undergraduate doing a research project in Bioinformatics. I know my weaknesses, especially that I am not good at speaking, listening, and interacting with people in all social context. Until now, this wasn't a problem, I hardly paid attention in class, studied by myself directly from books, and got excellent grades. But in my current position, I have come to understand that I have to improve some social skills if I want to advance. Right now, it's plainly difficult to me to follow the rationale among two or more phrases if I don't see them on paper and this characteristic is causing problems because my advisor's instruction are mostly oral.
Although my professor praises my ability to do math and program, he complains about how I easily lose track of the instructions. This is a true problem, specially when processing biological data (one thing is that the program works, the other is that it makes biological sense and I am not yet conversant in biological background). This situation is starting to raise problems with my advisor and I have to find a solution before everything gets worst.
Note: I take notes. This is the most logical, straightforward solution, but I never developed the ability to take good notes as I didn't like attending classes. I'm working to improve this skill, but I the problem of connecting orally communicated ideas effectively remains.
As a summary, I have to figure out how to follow the incredible amount of oral information passed to me, even if I have never built this ability.

Have you tried taking notes during your meetings?

@Noah Snyder - Absolutely, but, as i pointed out, I hardly went to class, I am not a good note taker and never developed that ability in class.

A great time would be to start trying it out now! Don't be afraid of asking your adviser to slow down or repeat something so you can jot it down. For biology stuff, seeing as I am also a bioinformatics person (or used to be), I understand how that can get confusing. Since you're pure CS from your description, you can probably get away with asking about the biological process behind it. That being said, you should probably brush up on an intro to biology textbook. Probably can bum one off a Bio Major.

What do you think is your problem? You get easily distracted? You have a hard time seeing the full frame of the question?

Also, consider discussing things with your fellow PhD students.  This will, at least, be less stressful and intimidating than with your supervisor.

@Davidmh I woudn't say I have problems concentrating. Instead, it's more problem the second problem. Each time my advisor gives instructions, he puts so much information that, if a I loose a single point, my work might go stray. And I loose lost of key points.

Do you have any language barriers? What language do you communicate in? What is your native language?

Have you discussed this with your professor? From the way you've explained it to us, it sounds like you have a genuine problem but your professor might not understand this and might, for example, think you're just not paying attention. It sounds like you're both going to need to work on this: you to become more effective at receiving oral communication and your professor to become more effective in communicating in a way that you can use.

I've found that taking notes, even point form, is really helpful.
Even if you were good at understanding oral instructions, taking meeting notes would be useful.
They let you go back to things you didn't have much time to think about at the time later on.
You could also email your supervisor a summary of your understanding of the meeting and your plans until the next meeting, so that he has a chance to correct/clarify in writing any misunderstandings, or refocus your priorities.
As for the problem of connecting oral instructions, you should take every opportunity to confirm your understanding of the main points discussed so far in the meeting. Rephrase what you just heard back to your supervisor. If there is a definition you don't know, either ask right away, or jot down the word to ask about later.

I take notes, but they are of little utility compared to the amount of information I receive. Furthermore, some professor don't like to be emailed with things they consider menial(mine). I wouldn't do that if I had students, but I can't change my advisor's aptitude.

You can ask at [productivity.se] about better note-taking techniques. If you can make your email simple and readable in less than a minute, your supervisor will more likely understand. You don't even have to ask him to do anything. It could just be a "this is what I took away from the meeting, and these are my plans until we meet next". Then, if you follow those plans, he can't really be disappointed, since he had an opportunity correct you.

@je_b Don't be too intimidated about emailing a recap email to him. Put yourself in his shoes -- would he rather spend 5 minutes reading your recap email and fix issues from the start, or wait 2 weeks to find out that what he thought would be finished turned out not so?

You say your ability to take notes is limited, but he expresses most of his comments verbally -- have you tried audio recording your meetings? Most smart phones have an app that will do that.
You should also ask him if that's alright first. You might get in trouble otherwise.

Unfortunately, he doesn't like this. He is very very good in its field, but military and ego-inflated.

That's really unfortunate. Maybe you can ask again, referencing the conversation you had about staying on instruction. Say that would be an easy way to start fixing the issue.

Forgive me if I'm way out of line, but the problems you describe sound similar to those who have Asperger's.  Especially, difficulty with social interactions and difficulty processing instructions given verbally and with less than complete logical precision are both indicative of that condition.  Have you looked into this?  If the diagnosis seems to fit, then there will be a lot of resources out there to help you.

I don't know. I have had the same kind of problems since I was a kid in school. I had a depression outbreak with signs of psychosis some years ago and, when I was a bit recovered, I asked the psychiatrist about Asperger, but he said that it was unlikely. Right now I still have symptoms and hallucinations, but I learned to live without medication. In any case, I don't consider speaking about my mental illness to my supervisor.

You've gotten professional help far beyond my own expertise here (I'm a mathematician, which is, famously, not especially close to being a psychiatrist).  You might possibly consider getting checked out by a specialist for that purpose.  Or not, it's up to you.  Another idea is to assume for the sake of argument that you have something like Asperger's, see what you would be advised to do if that were the case [cognitively and behaviorally; not pharmaceutically!], and try it for a little while.  If it helps, it helps.  If not, on to the next thing.

@je_b: "I learned to live without medications." As stated, it looks as if this is what you wanted...but you're still dealing with hallucinations and such. I don't know if it's aspergers, but I warmly recommend you go back to working with an analyst, including whatever appropriate medication. Forget about the stigma - mostly it seems also in your head -...when things reach that level, you certainly can benefit from help. Depression alone can make you deal with what you describe. Go get help; it's your life, and you don't get a medal for toughing it out.


text:
When is it appropriate to request more effort from a co-author on a funded project?
Suppose that my team received funding for a project to "deliver X in time Y". It is implied that each researcher will contribute, more or less, equally.
When is it appropriate to make this explicit? In other words, in this scenario, what is a commonly accepted threshold to confront an author about their lack of participation (when their contribution is half of what is implicitly expected, a tenth, etc.)?

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/29195/19607

I've never liked the idea of implicit distribution of work. In my projects, I always try to break down the project into smaller parts and parcel them out at the onset of the project. Regular meetings/emails make sure everyone stays on track, and I also use a project management software: Asana to keep track of how things are going.
Better to be upfront about things so that everyone is clear on their role instead of being in a situation where we have to worry about having an uncomfortable confrontation!

Both answers were suitable. I chose yours because I do think that making these points explicit at the onset is best.

People's contribution to projects is mainly determined by two factors:

Motivation. This might be career advancement opportunities, reputation advancements, working together with somebody they admire, publications, money, etc.
Ability. Time, knowledge & background, access to literature, access to production tools, equipment, etc.

When somebody is not contributing, they are lacking in either category (or in both). So the first thing you might do, is to inquire in a polite and sensible way where the problem is. Is the co-author lacking ability (time, tools, ...) or motivation? When you know the answer, you can figure out together how this can be resolved.
When you approach this as described above, you can do this immediately. You do not need to wait until some threshold of (un)acceptable behavior has been violated.
A blunt confrontation rarely delivers anything productive, certainly not in the long run.