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Get the Right Set of Skills beyond Your Research Arena!!

Getting a PhD is not necessarily a gate pass to the highly demanding corporate world, if that is your dream career. There does exist an industry PhD gap. By this gap I mean a gap between highly specialised PhD training and the expectations that the corporate world has from its industry friendly set of employees. … Continue reading “Get the Right Set of Skills beyond Your Research Arena!!”

Getting a PhD is not necessarily a gate pass to the highly demanding corporate world, if that is your dream career. There does exist an industry PhD gap. By this gap I mean a gap between highly specialised PhD training and the expectations that the corporate world has from its industry friendly set of employees. The gap can be really quite wide, if you have not honed those skills in you that would make you competent in the industry where you intend to practice your expertise of doctoral research.

Almost everyone around the world may feel that the PhD market is saturated but there is a deficit of the probable solutions to the problem. The fact of the matter is that the first job that you get is the most crucial one, right after your graduate experience. It is indeed the most difficult job to get as well so you need to know the possible options that could help you to make it not challenging beyond your capacity.

The most important thing to know here is that many of the PhD doctors don’t know the means and skills to provide the real and practical solutions to the problems that they may be expected to solve in their job profile. Hard work is the most important thing needed in your attitude to get you going where you want to be and the sooner you know it the better it is as the formative years are what set the foundation of where you are going to be in your future. You need to leave your past behind you and know how to move on.

With all this more, the bottom line is that you ought to have the right personality, drive, leadership and a strong practice of interpersonal skills that helps you to give the right productivity when you have to perform in a team. Other than your academic skills, that you would invariably develop and polish during the course of your PhD, the right personality would be very valuable and help you to carry your career much ahead than you could ever imagine. You may find a lot of competition here as there are a lot of competent job seekers available in the market, but that should not be a deterrent and a means to discourage your enthusiasm to seek success.

Without going any deeper into the problem and its possible solutions, know and remind yourself the most important thing that there is no set career path that is for everyone. Each one has a unique career journey and you got to make and create it by yourself.

Descriptive Statistics: Essential and Indispensable in Research

Descriptive statistics gives simple summaries of the desired sample and about the different observations that are made by the researcher. They can be either quantitative or visual, whatever be the choice of the researcher. They come of use at many stages during the entire course of research. In some researches, descriptive statistics form the fundamental … Continue reading “Descriptive Statistics: Essential and Indispensable in Research”

Descriptive statistics gives simple summaries of the desired sample and about the different observations that are made by the researcher. They can be either quantitative or visual, whatever be the choice of the researcher. They come of use at many stages during the entire course of research. In some researches, descriptive statistics form the fundamental basis for initial description and as pre requisite for more extensive research. In some researches, which are simpler in nature, they may by self-sufficient for a specific investigation.

Descriptive statistics has a history that goes back a long way in the past. What I understand by extensive reading is that it first showed its presence as a basic tabulation of the census data or the economic data of the country. Its application in all kinds of research has made its place in more recent times and it is considered an indispensable part of the exploratory data analysis.

When we talk in the field of business, it offers summary of varied types of data and comes of use to particularly investors and brokers to put to use historical account of the return behaviour. It is done by performing analysis so that one is able to make wiser investing decisions can be made in the future.

What we see as the most commonly used descriptive statistics is them mean. It is a means that helps to find out the central tendency and is to be analysed with a level of coefficient. When our sample size is large, it is so said that our mean comes out to be more accurate. The mean gives us the confidence intervals and from that we can have the range of values around which we can expect the mean to be located. On important reason for carrying out descriptive statistics is that it gives us the shape of the distribution and also the frequency of the values from the many ranges of the variable that have been found.

Even when you administer the most simplest of descriptive statistics, it is going to be of use, whether you are a researcher or an organisation. It would help you to know how close your data is in being normally distributed. Skewness and Kurtosis tells us how close it is to being normally distributed.

So whatever you area of research be, look into descriptive research and find it to add value to your research and take out more concrete and sound results.

Weird Grammar Rules You Might Not Have Heard Of!!

Even if you are not a stickler for grammar, you PhD would demand from you to be immaculate in your grammar. Some scholars go forward and end up becoming grammar geeks because all the time they are busy in rectifying the grammatical errors in their writing. Here I will discuss some of the most unusual … Continue reading “Weird Grammar Rules You Might Not Have Heard Of!!”

Even if you are not a stickler for grammar, you PhD would demand from you to be immaculate in your grammar. Some scholars go forward and end up becoming grammar geeks because all the time they are busy in rectifying the grammatical errors in their writing. Here I will discuss some of the most unusual grammar rules that you must know. After knowing this you would get an eye for noticing grammatical errors in almost every document you go through from time to time.

The use of which and that: Most of the professional writers often make a mistake in the use of which and that. Most of us think that these two pronouns can be used interchangeably. But you are wrong if you so think. “That” being in the category of restrictive pronoun it becomes very important for the noun it refers to. “Which” is a more detailing pronoun relatively so cannot be used interchangeably with that.

May & Might: Same like above, a lot of people believe these words can be used interchangeably but there is a difference in their meaning. “May” is a more positive word and implies possibility while “Might” is used for showing uncertainty for a situation that may not happen most likely.

Fewer & Less: This is perhaps the most commonly broken grammar rule that we see happening everywhere. But ironically, the logic for this is very simple. The use of “less” is more appropriate for intangible and hypothetical quantities such as “fun, joy, sad” etc. while we use the word “few” and “fewer” is more appropriate for those items that can be quantified easily and are of tangible characteristics.

Effect and Affect: It is crime for writers in English if they wrongly use the two words, “affect” and “effect”. It is actually very surprising that many people get it wrong most often as the difference between the two is very basic and simple to understand. “Effect” is a noun and “Affect” is a verb. Affect is used for telling about the outcome or consequences of something.

The use of comma: The use of commas is seen mostly with adjectives and adjectives are of varied categories such as coordinate, cumulative, descriptive and so on. The rule of the use of comma at each one is different and should be considered.

So, now when you sit down with your thesis or research documentation, be more particular about the grammar and its small intricacies we generally tend to overlook.

When You Prepare for Your PhD Presentation, Have You Thought about Your Audience?

In the course of your PhD, various number of times you have be behind the podium giving presentations. You supervisor may expect from you to participate in seminars, workshops and conferences and give paper presentations. But it isn’t really certain that all these opportunities would expose you to an audience that is academic. Sometimes your … Continue reading “When You Prepare for Your PhD Presentation, Have You Thought about Your Audience?”

In the course of your PhD, various number of times you have be behind the podium giving presentations. You supervisor may expect from you to participate in seminars, workshops and conferences and give paper presentations. But it isn’t really certain that all these opportunities would expose you to an audience that is academic. Sometimes your audience may be purely non-academic and here you are prepared with a technically academic presentation in front of them, how do you deal with it?

I am going to give you certain suggestions here to deal with an audience that wouldn’t be able to relate with you r academic content. How do you keep them engrossed? Here you go:

Keep your beginning simple: It is always better to get some idea about the kind of audience you are going to deal with before you go for an event. If you are ti deal with a non-academic audience, it is necessary that your beginning is very simple and easy to understand. Jargons, difficult terminology and scientific connotations used in the beginning can sometimes put off the interest of the audience and you may not be able to bring them back into your talk throughout.

Structure out your content: you need to structure out your content in such a way that it keeps the audience involved and makes it interactive to the extent possible. Incorporating activity based small inputs can help break the monotony and generate interest of the audience in a topic that may be completely novice to them otherwise. Keep the conversations as natural as possible with minimal incorporations of technicalities is a way to not let them feel left out and neglected.

Do good ice breaking: it is important to break the ice with a set of audience who is new to you and vice versa. In the beginning if you successfully break the ice with them and put them in a comfort zone by striking a wavelength with them, they want to listen to you more. In addition to that, you also get to know what they want to hear and you can focus your talk accordingly.

Even after doing all this and more, you may not find it very easy. There would be challenges here of varied kinds and may be subjective to the nature of the audience. Primarily I can say is stay natural move around a lot, connect and win over the audience by becoming familiar and friendly.

Does It Matter to Have Plagiarism in References?

Have you ever gone in the history of the word plagiarism? Where does the origin of the word lie? It comes from the Latin word “plagiarius” which means “the kidnapper”. This pretty much makes the gravity of the offence of plagiarism quite clear.  It is necessary as a scholar to present the ideas you pick … Continue reading “Does It Matter to Have Plagiarism in References?”

Have you ever gone in the history of the word plagiarism? Where does the origin of the word lie? It comes from the Latin word “plagiarius” which means “the kidnapper”. This pretty much makes the gravity of the offence of plagiarism quite clear.  It is necessary as a scholar to present the ideas you pick from reading literature as your own ideas to avoid getting trapped in the offence of plagiarism.

So that you are able to void plagiarism it is important to understand it thoroughly and develop the practice to avoid it in a tactful manner. Here I will share with you some practical and technical concepts related to plagiarism so that you know what to look for when working around making your document plagiarism free:

Most of the authors think that it is just sufficient to just list the source of the content in the appended bibliography or if required in the content and that takes care of the concern of plagiarism completely and indicates a sense of general gratitude of the writer towards the author from where the idea has been retrieved. But if your objective is to avoid charge of plagiarism then all borrowing of content and idea, however minor or small it be has to be very specifically, precisely and accurately referenced.  It is a trait of good academic practice.

Whenever you quote a source directly, word by word then it is not enough to just mention the source in the bibliography. You also need to be very careful that the passage which you are using word by word should be in quotation marks and intended with source having been given accurate referencing whether it be in footnote, endnote or the given specifications by the journal. Be very sure that you don’t leave any source of ambiguity in concern to where the quotation begins or ends.

If you are using tables, figures or  charts from any source then the source needs to be  cited in a very explicit manner and nit kept  discreet anyhow.

As an author you must never ignore or neglect acknowledging sources from where you have you used general content or paraphrased in according to your requirement.

As an author, when you sit to find sources of information , you may use research paper, websites, newspapers, television programmes, essays, tutorial, books and many more but the rules for referencing apply everywhere equally. Always remember that if you are careful about reference work you can stay away from the problem of accidental plagiarism.