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No offense but your post is rambling and does not contain great advice for prospective phds. Most advisors I met during PhD were extremely generous with their t

by moab 5y ago

No offense but your post is rambling and does not contain great advice for prospective phds. Most advisors I met during PhD were extremely generous with their time and their ideas, and their students would not have found appropriate problems and made rapid progress towards solutions without the intuition or help of their advisors. The story you tell about “2 week discoveries” and rapid independent progress is not the norm.

graycat 5y ago
Right. What I described is "not the norm". Are we supposed to consider only what is "the norm"? Instead of "the norm", I took the subject to be essentially how to get a US computer science Ph.D. and gave some ideas that worked for me and are "not the norm". Three points that might help: (1) My suggestions about doing so much independently can cut out a lot of slogging through dangerous waters of organizational behavior, competitions, comparisons with other students, personal relationships, department gossip, personal image, etc. I've seen a lot of people seriously hurt in graduate school. In the program I was in, I thought that the students were beautifully qualified, but only about 1 out of 16 left with a Ph.D. In two words, it was a blood bath. From the failure rate, that program, and others I've seen, made the Army Rangers and Navy SEALS training programs look like fuzzy-bunny play time. Nearly all my fellow students were perfectly capable of doing good research quite independently; their problem was interactions with faculty and the department on the way to doing good research. Soooo, it can be helpful, if a student can, to work so independently, if only just to reduce possibly harmful interactions with faculty. "Seriously hurt": I've seen very capable, dedicated people get seriously hurt, sometimes for life, and sometimes DIE, as in DEAD, from the damage. One who was hurt was my brother. One that was badly hurt was a physics prof I knew. I saw a lot of profs that had been badly hurt and developed really sick personalities. One student who was hurt had been Valedictorian, Summa Cum Laude, winner of Woodrow Wilson and NSF fellowships, astoundingly capable, totally dedicated, and DEAD. Let me put it to you this way: Sometimes a university will have as their official requirement for a Ph.D. dissertation "an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication". Soooo, two options: First option, do the work, write it up, print it out, drop it on the desk of the advisor, say you believe that the work is publishable and you are ready to stand for an oral exam. Second option, publish the work and drop the dissertation on the desk of the advisor with a copy of the letter from the journal accepting the paper. (2) At least at one time the Web site of the math department at Princeton stated (from memory) "No courses are offered for preparation for the qualifying exams. Graduate courses are introductions to research by experts in their fields. Students are expect to prepare for the qualifying exams on their own. Students should have some research project underway in their first year.". Okay, that's essentially what I did and got it done before I saw Princeton's statement. So, what I did was essentially "the norm" at the Princeton math department. (3) Fields of research vary. There is math, computer science, the rest of the STEM fields, the social sciences, the humanities, the arts, biological/medical research, and more. But here we are talking about computer science and, appropriately enough, I've tacked on some math. So, in such work it is common for a new Ph.D. to get an assistant professor slot where they are expected to publish, hopefully get research grants and publish, get promoted, have successful graduate students, and get promoted, etc. In all of this, they are wanted to do good research, good enough to win prizes, get grants, give students a good start on their careers. The "good research" is to be at least "new, correct, and significant". In nearly all of this work, the prof has above him to look up to for guidance only God; otherwise the prof is working essentially "independently". Uh, a suggestion then, along the lines of what Princeton said and what I did, is to learn to work heavily independently and to learn that as soon as possible. Right, it's not "the norm". In the program I was in, "the norm" was 15 students out of 16 leaving the university without a Ph.D. No doubt, of those 15 students, interactions with faculty were not always sweetness, smiles, and good coffee and Vienna desserts. For your "rambling", that sounds like I was being graded in an English class! One reason I got into math was that my correct proofs could not be criticized as "rambling" or anything else by any of the teachers. Instead of "rambling", I just described step by step what some of the issues were and how I was successful. What I wrote is MUCH shorter than the OP -- one of my points was, and I started with it, the OP was too long and complicated. If you want to apply "rambling", do that to the OP -- it covered lots of stuff that is just too far from what is crucial: What is crucial is one word, research. Two words, publishable research. Four words, prize winning publishable research. Ah, computer science has long regarded a good algorithm as one with worst case performance O(x^n) for any problem size x and some positive integer n. Okay, this definition was from Jack Edmonds. He left the University of Maryland (UM) without his Ph.D. Then he published some of his work on networks. Then some of the faculty at UM came to see Jack and assured him that should he wish to stack some of his papers and put a staple in one corner, that would be accepted for a Ph.D. Sooooo, Jack did his work independently. For the "two weeks", that's just what it took. I had and applied good preparation for the problem. I found the problem in a relatively advanced and well done course -- soooo, it's not too surprising that the problem was sitting there unsolved. It was an old loose end in the subject, and I tied it off. Some of what I did was a bit surprising. But when get out to the edge of a subject, there can be some problems still left and relatively easy to solve -- it can help to have a good math background, and that other people didn't have such a good background is some of why the problem was still unsolved. When get out to the edge like that, not all the remaining problems are ready for a Clay, Turing, Abel, Nobel prize -- there can be some little problems also. My POINT was not that I solved a problem in two weeks. Instead, my POINT was, as part of how to get a Ph.D., if a grad student can find some such doable problem with a publishable solution, then finding that solution can "wax their skis", cut out department gossip, cut down any issues of image or presentation of self before the public, let the student "prove themselves", etc. Or, to heck with the research result; instead, do such a thing to solve essentially POLITICAL problems. Soooo, yes, part of getting a Ph.D. is to do well enough on politics. Bottom line: If a student can work relatively independently as I described, then that can ease getting a Ph.D. Right, it's "not the norm". Oh, CMU was mentioned: One of my (official) dissertation advisors was later President at CMU! He seemed to like my work -- he had some of his other students build on my dissertation! Ah, one more piece of advice: Where to find problems such as I did for my Ph.D.? Sure, the usual way is to get a problem from an advisor. Hmm .... Here is another way, not "the norm": Get a problem off campus, from the real world. E.g., I don't know but I can guess that in the server farms of some major corporations, big banks, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Cloudflare, the US DoD, etc. they have some unsolved practical problems, e.g., how to do well on performance, reliability, security, scalability, and cost all at the same time. So, there, pick a problem, confirm that the literature has no practical solution, build a suitable mathematical model, find an optimal solution, write some software to confirm that the solution is practical, and publish that. So, for the criteria "new, correct, and significant", the "significant" part can come from the fact that some 10s of millions of dollars are to be saved, or reliability is greatly improved, or .... For "new", you checked for that at the beginning, and besides such server farms have been growing so fast that it is unlikely that they have good, old solutions for all their problems. Also, maybe go for a future problem assuming some factors of 10 scale up; by the time you get your work done, that future may be the present! For "correct", that can be mostly just about the math, and there can establish correctness with mathematical proofs. In short, that is what my Ph.D. dissertation did -- so, it can work. Also, surprising or not, commonly profs do NOT really have feet on the ground, finger tip feel, good knowledge of all challenging practical computing situations. So, should be able to find a good problem to solve. Is this advice "great"? Well, it was "great" for me -- it worked, and I came out undamaged. Also it's not "the norm" which might be an advantage!
- DEDLINE 5y ago
  I really appreciated your insights. Having seen my mother barely make it out of the PH.D. politics arena alive, your sentiment is spot on. Thank you for sharing.
- moab 5y ago
  No doubt there is a lot of good advice in your post. Being independent is of course a key aspect of being a successful scientist and researcher, whether in industry or in the traditional pathways in academia (tenure track asst. prof, etc). It's just unrealistic to expect in new PhD students. Of course at places like Berkeley/CMU/MIT/Stanford you will find many such people, who come with "batteries included". As a result, their advisors can sometimes just let them do their thing and they will churn our fantastic results. But that is not really the norm at most of the top-25 or top-50 graduate programs, and the students there will need a lot more guidance and collaborative work to turn them from merely strong students to great independent researchers. So I absolutely agree that being able to work relatively independently will make it easier to get a PhD. I just think that that quality is something one develops during the PhD journey. Re length/rambling: It's not a personal attack on you, just a suggestion that the information you write can probably be compressed and made much more effective. Yes, this is not an English class. And yes, you're trained as a mathematician and trying to be rigorous. But often times dropping some details to convey the general ideas is sufficient, especially on a fairly technical forum like this one. Your writing would be more effective if it was less prolix.

by moab 5y ago

graycat 5y ago

Right. What I described is "not the norm". Are we supposed to consider only what is "the norm"? Instead of "the norm", I took the subject to be essentially how to get a US computer science Ph.D. and gave some ideas that worked for me and are "not the norm". Three points that might help: (1) My suggestions about doing so much independently can cut out a lot of slogging through dangerous waters of organizational behavior, competitions, comparisons with other students, personal relationships, department gossip, personal image, etc. I've seen a lot of people seriously hurt in graduate school. In the program I was in, I thought that the students were beautifully qualified, but only about 1 out of 16 left with a Ph.D. In two words, it was a blood bath. From the failure rate, that program, and others I've seen, made the Army Rangers and Navy SEALS training programs look like fuzzy-bunny play time. Nearly all my fellow students were perfectly capable of doing good research quite independently; their problem was interactions with faculty and the department on the way to doing good research. Soooo, it can be helpful, if a student can, to work so independently, if only just to reduce possibly harmful interactions with faculty. "Seriously hurt": I've seen very capable, dedicated people get seriously hurt, sometimes for life, and sometimes DIE, as in DEAD, from the damage. One who was hurt was my brother. One that was badly hurt was a physics prof I knew. I saw a lot of profs that had been badly hurt and developed really sick personalities. One student who was hurt had been Valedictorian, Summa Cum Laude, winner of Woodrow Wilson and NSF fellowships, astoundingly capable, totally dedicated, and DEAD. Let me put it to you this way: Sometimes a university will have as their official requirement for a Ph.D. dissertation "an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication". Soooo, two options: First option, do the work, write it up, print it out, drop it on the desk of the advisor, say you believe that the work is publishable and you are ready to stand for an oral exam. Second option, publish the work and drop the dissertation on the desk of the advisor with a copy of the letter from the journal accepting the paper. (2) At least at one time the Web site of the math department at Princeton stated (from memory) "No courses are offered for preparation for the qualifying exams. Graduate courses are introductions to research by experts in their fields. Students are expect to prepare for the qualifying exams on their own. Students should have some research project underway in their first year.". Okay, that's essentially what I did and got it done before I saw Princeton's statement. So, what I did was essentially "the norm" at the Princeton math department. (3) Fields of research vary. There is math, computer science, the rest of the STEM fields, the social sciences, the humanities, the arts, biological/medical research, and more. But here we are talking about computer science and, appropriately enough, I've tacked on some math. So, in such work it is common for a new Ph.D. to get an assistant professor slot where they are expected to publish, hopefully get research grants and publish, get promoted, have successful graduate students, and get promoted, etc. In all of this, they are wanted to do good research, good enough to win prizes, get grants, give students a good start on their careers. The "good research" is to be at least "new, correct, and significant". In nearly all of this work, the prof has above him to look up to for guidance only God; otherwise the prof is working essentially "independently". Uh, a suggestion then, along the lines of what Princeton said and what I did, is to learn to work heavily independently and to learn that as soon as possible. Right, it's not "the norm". In the program I was in, "the norm" was 15 students out of 16 leaving the university without a Ph.D. No doubt, of those 15 students, interactions with faculty were not always sweetness, smiles, and good coffee and Vienna desserts. For your "rambling", that sounds like I was being graded in an English class! One reason I got into math was that my correct proofs could not be criticized as "rambling" or anything else by any of the teachers. Instead of "rambling", I just described step by step what some of the issues were and how I was successful. What I wrote is MUCH shorter than the OP -- one of my points was, and I started with it, the OP was too long and complicated. If you want to apply "rambling", do that to the OP -- it covered lots of stuff that is just too far from what is crucial: What is crucial is one word, research. Two words, publishable research. Four words, prize winning publishable research. Ah, computer science has long regarded a good algorithm as one with worst case performance O(x^n) for any problem size x and some positive integer n. Okay, this definition was from Jack Edmonds. He left the University of Maryland (UM) without his Ph.D. Then he published some of his work on networks. Then some of the faculty at UM came to see Jack and assured him that should he wish to stack some of his papers and put a staple in one corner, that would be accepted for a Ph.D. Sooooo, Jack did his work independently. For the "two weeks", that's just what it took. I had and applied good preparation for the problem. I found the problem in a relatively advanced and well done course -- soooo, it's not too surprising that the problem was sitting there unsolved. It was an old loose end in the subject, and I tied it off. Some of what I did was a bit surprising. But when get out to the edge of a subject, there can be some problems still left and relatively easy to solve -- it can help to have a good math background, and that other people didn't have such a good background is some of why the problem was still unsolved. When get out to the edge like that, not all the remaining problems are ready for a Clay, Turing, Abel, Nobel prize -- there can be some little problems also. My POINT was not that I solved a problem in two weeks. Instead, my POINT was, as part of how to get a Ph.D., if a grad student can find some such doable problem with a publishable solution, then finding that solution can "wax their skis", cut out department gossip, cut down any issues of image or presentation of self before the public, let the student "prove themselves", etc. Or, to heck with the research result; instead, do such a thing to solve essentially POLITICAL problems. Soooo, yes, part of getting a Ph.D. is to do well enough on politics. Bottom line: If a student can work relatively independently as I described, then that can ease getting a Ph.D. Right, it's "not the norm". Oh, CMU was mentioned: One of my (official) dissertation advisors was later President at CMU! He seemed to like my work -- he had some of his other students build on my dissertation! Ah, one more piece of advice: Where to find problems such as I did for my Ph.D.? Sure, the usual way is to get a problem from an advisor. Hmm .... Here is another way, not "the norm": Get a problem off campus, from the real world. E.g., I don't know but I can guess that in the server farms of some major corporations, big banks, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Cloudflare, the US DoD, etc. they have some unsolved practical problems, e.g., how to do well on performance, reliability, security, scalability, and cost all at the same time. So, there, pick a problem, confirm that the literature has no practical solution, build a suitable mathematical model, find an optimal solution, write some software to confirm that the solution is practical, and publish that. So, for the criteria "new, correct, and significant", the "significant" part can come from the fact that some 10s of millions of dollars are to be saved, or reliability is greatly improved, or .... For "new", you checked for that at the beginning, and besides such server farms have been growing so fast that it is unlikely that they have good, old solutions for all their problems. Also, maybe go for a future problem assuming some factors of 10 scale up; by the time you get your work done, that future may be the present! For "correct", that can be mostly just about the math, and there can establish correctness with mathematical proofs. In short, that is what my Ph.D. dissertation did -- so, it can work. Also, surprising or not, commonly profs do NOT really have feet on the ground, finger tip feel, good knowledge of all challenging practical computing situations. So, should be able to find a good problem to solve. Is this advice "great"? Well, it was "great" for me -- it worked, and I came out undamaged. Also it's not "the norm" which might be an advantage!

DEDLINE 5y ago
I really appreciated your insights. Having seen my mother barely make it out of the PH.D. politics arena alive, your sentiment is spot on. Thank you for sharing.
moab 5y ago
No doubt there is a lot of good advice in your post. Being independent is of course a key aspect of being a successful scientist and researcher, whether in industry or in the traditional pathways in academia (tenure track asst. prof, etc). It's just unrealistic to expect in new PhD students. Of course at places like Berkeley/CMU/MIT/Stanford you will find many such people, who come with "batteries included". As a result, their advisors can sometimes just let them do their thing and they will churn our fantastic results. But that is not really the norm at most of the top-25 or top-50 graduate programs, and the students there will need a lot more guidance and collaborative work to turn them from merely strong students to great independent researchers. So I absolutely agree that being able to work relatively independently will make it easier to get a PhD. I just think that that quality is something one develops during the PhD journey. Re length/rambling: It's not a personal attack on you, just a suggestion that the information you write can probably be compressed and made much more effective. Yes, this is not an English class. And yes, you're trained as a mathematician and trying to be rigorous. But often times dropping some details to convey the general ideas is sufficient, especially on a fairly technical forum like this one. Your writing would be more effective if it was less prolix.