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3 votes

Grading large enrollment courses

I tend to make it a "social event". The exam happens in the morning. Me and the TAs eat something (I am paying), and than we go in a room with a large table, each gets one problem to grade ...
Maarten Buis's user avatar
  • 41.2k
1 vote

Grading large enrollment courses

Split the TA's into as many groups as there are problems. Each group grades its problem on all of the papers, using a well prepared rubric, and reviewing a sample of papers before hand to validate ...
Brian Borchers's user avatar
1 vote

What to do when a result is essentially proven but not stated in an existing publication?

Let me see if I can sum up your current situation: The existing publication proved a lemma, but did not deem it worth of calling it a lemma and left it silently in the proof of another theorem. You ...
Stef's user avatar
  • 183
2 votes

Question to professor one week before an exam (as a mathematician)

In the big picture, there's a clear dichotomy: I can either admit my ignorance now, or I can do so one week from now. Whatever harm may befall me by admitting my ignorance now will seemingly also ...
Aaron Montgomery's user avatar
1 vote

Is it too pretentious for an undergraduate student to have their own personal page?

Yes, it's fine. Moreover, this will help you to showcase your accomplishments get more opportunities in each step of your life. Just gradually add it over time. In addition, if you add blog section ...
circassia_ai's user avatar
2 votes

Question to professor one week before an exam (as a mathematician)

Based on my own experience, I'd do it, but with care. About 40 years ago I did exactly this with a question for an enginering electrical masters degree paper. It was only one question and I felt it ...
Russell McMahon's user avatar
4 votes
Accepted

Editor Assigned Pending to Reviews Completed in Less Than a Day

There is no way to answer your question without knowing the inner workings of the journal you submitted to. Electronic submission systems rely on human input and are therefore subject to an even wider ...
Thomas Schwarz's user avatar
0 votes

Question to professor one week before an exam (as a mathematician)

From the professor's perspective, it might give the impression that you weren't fully attentive during the lectures. Also he is a kind of a person that gets angry if you waste his time. Sounds to me ...
uhoh's user avatar
  • 2,740
3 votes

Is it too pretentious for an undergraduate student to have their own personal page?

I have learned some very difficult mathematics from blog posts written by some (admittedly, genius) mathematicians when they were in early years of college or even still in high school. So having a ...
Sergey Guminov's user avatar
9 votes

What to do when a result is essentially proven but not stated in an existing publication?

This is a judgement call. I've seen (and applied) different approaches, each of which has advantages and disadvantages. You can say that the result follows by a modification of a proof from [insert ...
Jakub Konieczny's user avatar
1 vote

Is it too pretentious for an undergraduate student to have their own personal page?

No it's not. From what you describe, it looks like you want to have a web page like it was in the good old days of the Internet of Ideas (also called Internet 1.0 ... T&C apply, these names are ...
EarlGrey's user avatar
  • 14.1k
7 votes

Question to professor one week before an exam (as a mathematician)

To add to the other answers: it's possible that even if you understand the material well, you will occasionally be faced with some subtle question that you cannot immediately resolve. I'm not a ...
Allure's user avatar
  • 121k
1 vote

Is it too pretentious for an undergraduate student to have their own personal page?

You should have a web page listing your name, the university where you study, and a way to contact you. If your name is common, you might add something else that would help identify you. No matter ...
Anonymous Physicist's user avatar
51 votes
Accepted

What to do when a result is essentially proven but not stated in an existing publication?

I found myself in the position when I need some fact but the literature search produced something "close enough but not quite what I want" rather often. Moreover, I bet that this is a fairly ...
fedja's user avatar
  • 10.7k
11 votes

Is it too pretentious for an undergraduate student to have their own personal page?

It used to even be expected. When I started university in 2001 every student got allocated some space for a homepage on the university servers. That might vary by country, and be less popular post ...
davolfman's user avatar
  • 353
20 votes

Is it too pretentious for an undergraduate student to have their own personal page?

I had a webpage as a grad student where I had a lot of tutorials on how to use the various tools that we used in circuits classes. I also had some of my lectures, and tools. It got about 100k hits a ...
b degnan's user avatar
  • 529
35 votes

Is it too pretentious for an undergraduate student to have their own personal page?

Yes, it is fine, but if you intend to maintain it into the future, keep it professional in all respects. It isn't likely to be found by many people, however, unless you also make it useful in some way....
Buffy's user avatar
  • 331k
37 votes

What to do when a result is essentially proven but not stated in an existing publication?

It is acceptable to write "If you find a copy of this book, and change all instances of the word macguffin to weak macguffin on pages 438-442, you will find that the statements and proofs remain ...
Darren Ong's user avatar
  • 4,063
62 votes

Question to professor one week before an exam (as a mathematician)

Yes, it is appropriate to ask the professor a question one week before the exam. Professors and other university teachers are very well aware that students often defer exam preparation until a few ...
Theoretician's user avatar
0 votes

In the U.S., is it appropriate for math professors to ask students to rewrite their messy (poorly handwritten) homework to be graded?

Put your rules in writing, including rules about looking at the work of others and send a copy to your chair. If he's happy then you're allowed. Even if you are required to accept handwritten work, it ...
shmuel's user avatar
  • 111
1 vote

In the U.S., is it appropriate for math professors to ask students to rewrite their messy (poorly handwritten) homework to be graded?

As a TA (material science), I always told the students that if I could not read the critical steps but the results were somewhat right, I would take up to 10% off - because becoming an engineer ...
Karajoannes's user avatar
0 votes

In the U.S., is it appropriate for math professors to ask students to rewrite their messy (poorly handwritten) homework to be graded?

If you can’t read it I wouldn’t see the problem of having them re-write it. I think it’d be better to let them know at the beginning of the school year let them know that they’re work needs to be ...
4skinphenom's user avatar
1 vote

Is publishing a book with solutions to exercises in a math book that doesn't provide them legal?

I would recommend against this, but can't give a legal answer. I can give you some background to back up my recommendation and perhaps answer your specific questions. First, copyright is civil law in ...
Buffy's user avatar
  • 331k
0 votes

In the U.S., is it appropriate for math professors to ask students to rewrite their messy (poorly handwritten) homework to be graded?

My field isn't math, but I more or less required all of my students to type everything that isn't done in class in front of me, not only so that it would be legible, so that it could be submitted ...
Aaargh Zombies's user avatar
1 vote

In the U.S., is it appropriate for math professors to ask students to rewrite their messy (poorly handwritten) homework to be graded?

In my (physics) classes, the students are advised (in writing) that submitting poorly written or presented material may result in inaccurate evaluation of said material. Note that contrary to others, ...
ZeroTheHero's user avatar
  • 26.7k
0 votes

In the U.S., is it appropriate for math professors to ask students to rewrite their messy (poorly handwritten) homework to be graded?

Try to give students the benefit of the doubt and act not as if they know what to do and refuse to do it, and instead that they don't know what to do. My impression is that US high school math ...
Matthew Leingang's user avatar
0 votes

Choosing Recommendation Letter Writers: Relevance vs. Strength

If you can submit more than one letter - do both. However, if it isn't an option, I'd stick with the stronger letter (the profs from the machine learning). They know you better, they are more ...
Artifact123's user avatar
4 votes

Oral exams in mathematics at university

What is the benefit of oral exams at all? Why don't they just examine with written exams? The utility of an oral exam is the flexibility of the format, and the tightness of the feedback loop. This is ...
Agnishom Chattopadhyay's user avatar
2 votes

Oral exams in mathematics at university

Oral exam, on any level of education, is interactive exam. Written exam or test is one-way do -> submit -> evaluate. It means that the teacher/professor can directly observe the student and see ...
Crowley's user avatar
  • 3,249
2 votes

In the U.S., is it appropriate for math professors to ask students to rewrite their messy (poorly handwritten) homework to be graded?

If homework is actually unreadable then it is appropriate to give a zero grade for that particular question and continue to grade the rest of the paper. If it doesn't meet your arbitrary standard of ...
Jack Aidley's user avatar
  • 11.7k
2 votes

Does a second degree disvalue the first one?

People who do a second degree often do so because they want to change their specialization. If you change your specialization, you typically choose not to keep up with your old specialization (there ...
Maarten Buis's user avatar
  • 41.2k
6 votes

Oral exams in mathematics at university

The primary benefit of oral exams is that they are interactive. In the best case, this allows to more rapidly identify the level of understanding of a student. One can ask a question, and if it's ...
D.W.'s user avatar
  • 8,009
3 votes

Oral exams in mathematics at university

Oral exams are common in Europe. I find them much better than written ones when i) you are not prejudiced and ii) want to actually see how good a student is. They will not be completely fair, though - ...
WoJ's user avatar
  • 7,666
3 votes

Oral exams in mathematics at university

One more advantage of the oral exam: at the beginning of my Analysis I+II oral exam, my math professor asked me what topic I would like to start with. That kind of thing helps immensely by having the ...
Stephan Kolassa's user avatar
15 votes

Oral exams in mathematics at university

The main advantage of an oral exam is that it is interactive. It can be used both to correct stupid mistakes and slips of tongue on the fly and to probe deeper into the student's knowledge when you ...
fedja's user avatar
  • 10.7k
19 votes

In the U.S., is it appropriate for math professors to ask students to rewrite their messy (poorly handwritten) homework to be graded?

I require typed homework in my classes. This requirement is traceable back to a program level learning outcome that says that students will be able to communicate mathematics in a professional ...
Brian Borchers's user avatar
46 votes

In the U.S., is it appropriate for math professors to ask students to rewrite their messy (poorly handwritten) homework to be graded?

Yes. In most other fields, university and college instructors often require that students type their work, and submit a typed, spellchecked, referenced, and otherwise professionally written document. ...
Xander Henderson's user avatar
9 votes

In the U.S., is it appropriate for math professors to ask students to rewrite their messy (poorly handwritten) homework to be graded?

What you are "allowed" to do is somewhat of a local question, but there aren't a lot of restraints on tenured faculty. Student feedback can be taken into account in tenure decisions, however....
Buffy's user avatar
  • 331k
13 votes

Oral exams in mathematics at university

This is just a couple of anecdotes but they may provide some enlightenment. My doctoral advisor (Math, in US), when he was teaching undergrad courses always used only oral exams. He was from Europe. ...
Buffy's user avatar
  • 331k
12 votes

Oral exams in mathematics at university

In my previous job, when we interviewed recent graduate candidates for certain roles, we gave them a problem to solve that included mathematics, economics and lot's of common sense. They had 45' ...
Oбжорoв's user avatar
  • 2,415
34 votes

Oral exams in mathematics at university

Not a mathematician here, but Computer Science lecturer. In my experience, oral exams benefit the student. In a written exam you're stuck with whatever questions/tasks the lecturer came up. Usually ...
Sirko's user avatar
  • 441
1 vote

How can an independent researcher publish a well-written research paper / proof in a respected mathematical publication?

Direct answer to the question that's asked: you write the paper up and submit it to a journal. There's no requirement that the author be affiliated to a university to publish. How do you submit? You ...
Allure's user avatar
  • 121k
15 votes

Status of the GRE exams for PhD programs in mathematics in 2023

I spent about an hour looking into this question. I looked at the mathematics PhD programs ranked numbers 21 through 61 on the US News and World Report List. I found five that require at least one ...
Pete L. Clark's user avatar
-7 votes

How can an independent researcher publish a well-written research paper / proof in a respected mathematical publication?

Try to follow the rules for writing using available papers from the field as an example and follow the rules from guidelines for authors from the relevant journals. Then submit your work to preprints....
Dejan's user avatar
  • 11
1 vote

Choice of Location for Math PhD Grad

Well, Greater New England has a lot of colleges with a variety of rankings from the very top few to around #5000 or so (not a joke, but I won't name names). But few people have a lot of "choice&...
Buffy's user avatar
  • 331k
0 votes

Will my undergraduate degree matter to get accepted for a PhD?

First, remember that the #1 way to be admitted to a good program is to have a professor on the inside who is looking for students, and whose interests are aligned with yours. You then convince that ...
Cheery's user avatar
  • 10.9k
0 votes

Conditions for publishing scientific articles

Sharing information an article is common and will not affect the publication process with any journal in mathematics. However, your attitude is wrong and will not help you. You seek "help to ...
Ambicion's user avatar
  • 5,470
2 votes

How long should it take for minor revision, in pure mathematics?

I have been in a similar situation. I think it is not worth sending a reminder email until at least three months have passed, and perhaps more than that. The reasons for this are as follows: If you ...
Especially Lime's user avatar

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