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There's plenty of sub-par British PhDs but plenty of sub-par European ones too. I imagine there's plenty of sub-par American, Asian etc PhDs too but they are outside of my personal experience. I've seen people whose PhDs amount to little more than just coding up things other people developed...

Sorry, only just saw this post after someone else quoted it. There's a difference between 'a lot' and 'absolute'. If you are willing to take the risk then you can submit when you want. The department will likely just say "Your supervisor disagrees so if you fail you will not get a second...

The company I work for requires a PhD to apply and we reject 99.5% of applicants. Most without even an interview due to being not in the right area but the number of maths PhDs who can't do basic boilerplate mathematics because it's been a few years and their memory is poor is shocking. When...

No, that wasn't what your point was. That was my point. Your point was the statement "Keep your supervisor happy or go find another job". My point was you don't have to keep your supervisor happy, you can go it pretty much alone without having to find another job. You make it sound like they...

I almost think that's part of the test of getting a PhD. Someone says "Okay, here's 3 years of money. I'll give you something to think about and a pointer every now and again but you can work when you want, on pretty much what you want. I'll check up on it, somewhat, every 6 or 12 months. If you...

I wouldn't advise people to take on part time jobs, no matter how wonderful and cuddly their supervisor is because while you might have time now you don't know how research will go. Next week you might find your experiment needs to be repeated, 5 times, due to an error you made. Someone might...

Did, not doing. Viva was Feb 2010. Despite the various issues I just outlined I now work in a research company doing stuff like quantum mechanics, AI, systems engineering and a bunch of other research topics as the research team leader. The reason I got that position (signed the promotion...

You're not being unreasonable. As you said, plenty of people do PhDs while raising small children. I have no idea how some of them afford it or can move about Europe every few years with a wife and toddlers but they manage it. The issue is whether or not you can manage the dual workload...

The number of people with 'PhD' after their name who can't do that is even more depressing. During my A Levels I had to study for the STEP maths exam for Cambridge and while looking through some REALLY old (like mid 70s) A Level past papers I came across exactly a question which had appeared in...

You need a passport or drivers license, a cheque for the amount made out to yourself, a bank statement or utility bill with your current address and perhaps an hour or so of your time so you can wait till someone appropriate at the bank is free, though doing the forms etc only takes 15 minutes...

Justify the right hand side of the paragraphs so it gives the page a nice frame. Don't do the 2 column layout, it makes it look like you're marginalising (no pun intended) those things in the left hand column. I don't think you need to say 'natural weight training, power lifting and nutrition'...

Actually neutrinos can! Most people are familiar with the concept of things like electrons emitting photons, that's how lights work. That involves 1 particle making another but that particle remaining or perhaps decaying into a set of different particles such as in beta decay. However, it's...

Actually those are quite different. Gravity and electromagnetism have a number of important differences. For example, gravity can only attract while electromagnetism can also repel. Furthermore your example of a magnetic field is particularly inappropriate due to the relationship between the...

The notion of vacuum energy is not a return to the aether. The aether, as viewed in the mid 1800s, had fluid like properties, which is not the properties of the quantum vacuum. You'll be hard pressed to find a physicist who thinks we've got the true picture of how things work. However, there's...

It's the decimal equivalent of 1/2 = 2/4. It's something you don't generally get told but not all decimal numbers are actually different, it is a representation of a concept rather than the definition of the concept. Because that's unnecessary and wrong. Because most numbers would be thrown out...

If only to cause some of us to further despair about the state of maths and science education in the country.

I have a friend who reads this forum and mentions such threads. Usually I just read them and think "Can't be bothered" but when someone says something particularly teeth grinding I'll post. I used to post normally but I rarely read this forum and in general I'm only sitting at my computer if I'm...

Sorry but this sort of mathematical principle underpins everything in mathematical physics. The set of numbers known as the Reals are DEFINED as the Cauchy completion of the Rationals, where Cauchy completion means that you consider infinite length sequences of rationals whose limit is not...

Please don't say things like "but if you're talking about real math" because you obviously don't know what 'real math' is. Speaking as a real mathematician, both by education and profession, who knows plenty of real mathematicians, I can firmly say you don't know what you're talking about...

This is nonsense. Firstly some universities don't follow textbooks, the courses can often following the whims of the individual lecturers. The first year or two might be tightly constrained but by the time you get to 3rd or 4th years there's a lot more freedom for the lecturers. I went to a...