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I'm due to start my PhD in Pure Mathematics next month, fully funded by a scholarship, at an average university, I'll be specialising in combinatorial group theory, and I have a strong First in Mathematics from a Russell group university. My goal is to become an academic.

This is my Mathematics Stack Exchange (MSE) profile. I've been an active user since 2013, visiting pretty much daily, but my reputation is currently just 5,760 and I haven't used MathOverflow at all (as the questions there every time I visit, which isn't that often, are beyond me). This seems quite low. Should this worry me?

To what extent is MSE reputation an indication of potential in academia?

aeismail
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Shaun
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  • BTW: Your profile seems pretty fine –  Sep 13 '17 at 05:49
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    The 3 best programmers whom I personally known and worked with in my country, at least in my opinion, don't have a stackoverflow account. – Lynob Sep 13 '17 at 09:01
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    In every case that I tried to impress someone with my SE points I failed badly. Because most people have no idea what the heck SE is, and the few who do, surely won't find it that impressive. – polfosol Sep 13 '17 at 13:06
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    As polfsol says, SE points are not impressive. However, the quality of your answers might impress somebody. I use muy Statistics SE contributions to showcase that I can write about statistics in English, just as I could use a blog for the same purpose. I don't make an answer out of this comment because I can't say for sure if it has impacted my career (but I keep the link at the end of my CV). – Pere Sep 13 '17 at 15:40
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    Points on the SX measure contributions, not quality. Some people answer 20+ questions daily, but with low quality answers. Nevertheless over the years they can collect a lot of reputation. Furthermore the number of votes a Q/A gets scales more with popularity than with quality IMO. On SO I've written - in my opinion - HQ posts with 1-3 votes, and straightforward answers with 10+ votes. – willeM_ Van Onsem Sep 13 '17 at 16:06
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    "To what extent is MSE reputation an indication of potential in academia?" It is an interesting question, but without data it is somewhat pointless to speculate. Also note that "potential" is somewhat nebulous. I take it as being essentially obvious that an undergraduate who can competently answer questions on something like MSE has potential in graduate school. – John Coleman Sep 13 '17 at 16:06
  • On another note: I've seen instances of people with technical blogs which interact with their SE accounts (e.g. has blog posts which expand on the answers to interesting questions). If you have a high-quality blog that complements the SE account that could be relevant when and if you get to the stage of applying for positions. – John Coleman Sep 13 '17 at 16:10
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    At one point a few of us compared our academic h index with our stack exchange h index. It was probably in chat or meta. – StrongBad Sep 13 '17 at 22:08
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    I currently have more Math.SE AND more MathOverflow points than you do and I wasn't smart enough to get into a Math PhD program. I would wager a large quantity of money that you are better at math than I am. I also have several friends from college who are in math PhD programs (and who are definitely smarter/more talented than me) who also have no account or far fewer points. Therefore neither Math.SE nor MathOverflow points are a reliable indicator of "math prowess". (You get more points for answers, but you can also get a large number of points for stupid questions.) – Chill2Macht Sep 16 '17 at 17:23
  • @Lynob vacuous truth? – BCLC Apr 02 '18 at 18:04
  • To what extent is MSE reputation an indication of potential in education? – BCLC Apr 02 '18 at 18:28
  • @Lynob I think OP meant to ask about how MSE activity/reputation is an indicator given that OP had visited daily for around 4 years. – BCLC Apr 02 '18 at 18:29

8 Answers8

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The only thing that a high MSE or MO reputation indicates is that a person spends too much time on the internet (and I say that as someone with a reasonably high reputation on MO). I don't think you should take it seriously as a data point on how successful you are likely to be.

On a related note, it also doesn't play any role in things like hiring decisions. At all the places I've worked, someone would be ridiculed if they brought up MO or MSE reputation at a hiring meeting.

It's just recreation.

Andy Putman
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    The main way that MO affects my opinions of people isn't through their reputation, but through particular questions or answers that got my attention. For example, I once invited someone to a conference because they kept answering my MO questions. – Noah Snyder Sep 13 '17 at 00:43
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    I disagree with your assessment that MSE/MO contributions can play no role in the way people are perceived when they are evaluated for jobs. See here for a related discussion. I do agree with @NoahSnyder, what matters is actual reputation (in the normal English-language sense of the word) rather than reputation points. In any case, all of that is entirely tangential to OP's question, which you addressed well in the first paragraph. – Dan Romik Sep 13 '17 at 00:58
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    I agree in general with the answer. Though for a PhD student, I can imagine having an active profile in a community site on the relevant subject might be a bit of interesting if not helpful 'fluff' for your application, if you have an appropriate situation to mention it in (perhaps in a personal essay, not the CV). For a research faculty position I don't believe it would be useful. –  Sep 13 '17 at 04:11
  • I agree. On a related note, I have seen job advertising which asks applicants to provide their Stack Overflow ID if they have one, but I think it's a poor metric of ability - there are plenty of highly skilled developers/programmers who have low rep (or even no SO account). And then who wants to employ someone who appears to spend a lot of time working on other people's projects? – Mick Sep 13 '17 at 04:17
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    Disagree with an answer for example on Stack Overflow a person's reputation can tell me a lot about the persons skills as a developer (especially users with high rep). I wonder why it would be different on MO site. –  Sep 13 '17 at 05:49
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    @Mick You have missed the point. Given the quality of content on stack overflow (just try posting an answer or a question that is not relevant! you will be surprised by the nr. of negative votes you receive per second ;)) high rep speaks well of the user. –  Sep 13 '17 at 05:55
  • Stack Overflow rep is a hiring factor for quite some It companies. but I'd say universities don't really pay attention to MO/MSE. – Polygnome Sep 13 '17 at 09:37
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    @DanRomik I agree with both Andy and Noah. I read Andy's answer with reputation meaning SE rep in the numerical sense. – Kimball Sep 13 '17 at 11:00
  • Related: https://tex.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3938/the-importance-for-getting-an-account/3947#3947 – Ethan Bolker Sep 13 '17 at 13:16
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    @DanRomik: Notice that I said that MSE/MO reputation does not play any role in hiring. I stand by that and cannot imagine any serious person regarding the numerical reputation score as anything other than a game. That doesn't mean that one's contributions are irrelevant, though they are very much lower order terms (in particular, I don't know anyone whose contributions are interesting enough that I would want to hire them but whose research record is not already impressive enough to turn my head). – Andy Putman Sep 13 '17 at 15:54
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    @GiorgiMoniava: The hiring practices in the computer programming world and in university mathematics departments are completely different. In particular, we have far more useful sources of information concerning job candidates, namely their published research record and their letters of recommendation. As I said in my answer, anyone who brought up things like a candidate's reputation score on some website in a hiring meeting would be belittled mercilessly. – Andy Putman Sep 13 '17 at 16:00
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    @GiorgiMoniava "I wonder why it would be different on MO site." MO is and always has been rather different, in its content and attitude, from StackOverflow. Several people here, as long-time MO users and professional mathematicians, might be better placed to comment on how hiring committees in academic mathematics view MO reputation, than people who don't have MO accounts and aren't professional mathematicians. – Yemon Choi Sep 13 '17 at 16:34
  • @AndyPutman Sure I know about other sources like research record and recommendation letters. My point merely was you can gauge persons skills and talent in certain field (this case math) from his/her reputation. That's it. Then there is also reputation and there is reputation: I doubt committee should belittle people who have 100k rep on MO (I am not familiar with that site but on SO that would mean the person with 100k is very likely to be much more skilled in programming than any person on a "committee" ;)) –  Sep 13 '17 at 19:44
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    @GiorgiMoniava: Among the high rep MO users (say, the first 3-4 pages of people ranked by rep), there are some some extraordinary people (including a couple of Fields medalists), but also plenty of people whose research records are pretty mediocre (there are even people in the latter category on the first page). There is no way to say this without coming off like a total snob, but the kinds of people on the hiring committees at the universities I've worked at (good, but not super-elite) are far more distinguished than many high-rep users of MO. – Andy Putman Sep 13 '17 at 21:38
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To what extent is MSE reputation an indication of potential in academia?

Very little. You get a lot of reputation for simple answers to simple questions that make it onto the HNQ list, because those are the ones that people can quickly understand and say, "Yeah, that's right." Conversely, you get little reputation for deep, detailed answers to difficult questions, because people (probably rightly) think that reading and digesting them won't be a productive use of their time.

High reputation on a technical Stack Exchange site might indicate that you're a good teacher of that subject, since well-explained, easy-to-understand answers tend to get higher reputation. But, the teaching experience you get as a student and early-career researcher will be a much better indication of that.

David Richerby
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Perhaps this is a philosophical nuance, but I think a case could be made that high MSE reputation would correlate strongly with success in academia. This correlation is likely not directly related to MSE reputation itself, but to something that a high MSE reputation may indicate: love of mathematics.

As an applied mathematics PhD holder myself, I've witnessed first-hand that success in both PhD programs and academic careers in general depends largely on having sufficient motivation and perseverance to put in the time necessary to develop new insights. I would argue that a high MSE reputation indicates a willingness and motivation to seek out challenging problems in a wide variety of mathematical subject matter.

Moreover, the fact that MSE reputation is not directly related to someone's job or academic position suggests that person is interacting with MSE in their personal time, which indicates that their motivation to participate in the mathematical community goes deeper than just looking for a way to pay the bills.

Thus, if mathematical academic success is correlated with having proper motivation to learn mathematics, and high MSE reputation is an indicator of sound motivation to learn mathematics, then, by the transitive property, high MSE reputation should be correlated with academic success.

Some of the above is tongue-in-cheek, but while the relationship between MSE reputation and academic success is not causal, I think there is likely a positive correlation resulting from a natural selection bias for significant contributors to this site.

bmosov01
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    I'll acknowledge the likely correlation, but note there is no likelihood of a reverse correlation: most highly successful math academicians are not on MSE. The population sizes are different. – Wildcard Sep 15 '17 at 05:06
  • The other thing is that SE sites provides instant gratification for routine achievements being doable in a few minutes, in a way exactly the opposite of what is usually needed for mathematical research. So I would not give all that much predictive value to it re research. I may give it more regrading being a dedicated teacher. – quid Sep 15 '17 at 09:46
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    @Wildcard I wouldn't get lost in correlations, it's simply that "interacting with MSE in their personal time, ... indicates ... their motivation to participate in the mathematical community". Answering and asking questions depicts the involvement and interest in the subject. Reputation points is just a feature of the website and can be seen as a simple measure of the popularity of those interactions... People with successful careers prove their success with interactions with other communities, through papers or books... Comparing those communities with SE sites may be fruitless. – Armfoot Sep 15 '17 at 09:55
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    @Armfoot gets at the gist of my point. The question of level of success in academics and how that correlates to level of MSE reputation is a bit different (and likely more complex). However, I think someone who posts here and enjoys answering mathematical questions/contributing to the community has a leg up against those who might go into an advanced degree thinking of academia as more of a 9-5 job that'll pay the bills. I've seen such people fail to succeed, both at the graduate student level and at the professor level, due in large part to improper or insufficient motivation. – bmosov01 Sep 15 '17 at 16:49
  • Doesn't it actually indicate the opposite? That instead of working on your research ideas, you're passing time on MSE or MO? – einpoklum Sep 16 '17 at 19:53
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    The OP states he is starting his PhD program next month. While it's not unheard of for undergraduates to begin research in mathematics, I would venture the majority of math PhD students don't engage in research until after a year or two in a graduate program. It seems a bit pedantic to me to assume the OP is participating in MSE at the expense of doing research at this stage in his career. – bmosov01 Sep 18 '17 at 03:04
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You shouldn't worry about MSE "reputation"; one can find MSE members with low reputation but high academic potential and vice versa. Think about it: there are members who reached 100k just by answering elementary calculus and combinatorics questions. "Reputation" is more about effort rather than potential. However, there is definitively a tendency that those with high academic potential get into top-notch (as opposed to average) PhD programs.

Bernie
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I don't think SE participation is likely to matter one way or the other in your graduate studies, as long as it doesn't eat up a lot of time you ought to be spending elsewhere. Come to ask for help or offer it when appropriate.

Later on in your career that may change. My son Ben Bolker has a substantial presence on stackoverflow, helping people with R and statistics. (He's a tenured full professor so can apportion his time as he pleases.)

I posted this on tex se meta:

I quietly argue in my department and regularly tell colleagues that significant participation in stackexchange sites should count in faculty reviews as service to the scholarly community. I'm sure @egreg's answers here advance science more than does his mathematics, however deep and interesting that may be.

https://tex.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3938/the-importance-for-getting-an-account/3947#3947

Ethan Bolker
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Social media is definitely becoming a new component to academia outside of publications, and I suspect it can be influential to your career as a form of networking that may, for instance, get your work cited more often simply by bringing it more to others' attention. Possibly a good MSE could be helpful to that, but I suspect it's a stretch - Twitter, LinkedIn and other proper social media tools are better suited to that purpose. Beyond that I echo the other answers by saying you shouldn't expect it to be taken as a serious CV point for recruitment or hiring in academia.

beldaz
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Lots of the duties which decide success in academia are not directly related to knowledge in or passion for the field of study but hard work, perseverance, acquiring grants, doing teaching, administration, live presentations, seminars, conferences, becoming a popular teacher, co-worker and contributor.

Math.SE strips those duties down and we only get to see the knowledge and passion side of the subject of study. There is much more to creating a career in academia than knowledge and passion in the subject of study.

mathreadler
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Being associated with SE is not necessarily a good thing. Not that you are like this, but many of the responders on SE simply do not present a pleasant demeanor and are off-putting in their arrogance.

Search for, "Stack Exchange Hate," and see what you get, then ask yourself, "If this is how people perceive SE, do I want really anyone knowing I'm associated with it?"

If you want to establish a reputation (which is not a function of SE to begin with), establish a real one, in the real world.

FoundingFather
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