Scientific Communication CITS7200 Lecture 13 Writing a Thesis

A thesis is an unusually long paper containing a detailed discussion of a unifying hypothesis regarding the work you have undertaken in your research

A thesis is a proposition to be maintained or proved A hypothesis is a proposition made as a basis for reasoning without the assumption of its truth; a supposition made as a starting point for further investigation

A PhD thesis shall be a substantial and original contribution to scholarship, for example, through the discovery of knowledge, the formulation of theories, or the innovative re-interpretation of known data and established ideas

A thesis must describe your own work and thinking A thesis must demonstrate that you can work independently, accurately, and critically

Before you start, check the regulations Use CS&SE Honours styleguide

Plan your writing Start early Collect all data from all experiments and format for inclusion Collect all bibliographic information at time of reading Write synopses when you read

Keep records as you go along, and date them Do systematic work Don’t claim precision where it is not justified Don’t present a conjecture as a fact Don’t plagiarise Don’t falsify records or cook up data

Keep backups of all work Don’t underestimate the amount of time writing takes

The form of a thesis Title Page

The Title of My Thesis M. Y. Surname This report is submitted as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Honours Programme of the School of Computer Science & Software Engineering The University of Western Australia 2006

Acknowledgements Thank those who helped you, and acknowledge any financial help

Abstract “an abbreviated, accurate representation of the contents of a document, without added interpretation or criticism and without distinction as to who wrote the abstract”.

An informative abstract answers, in about words, the following questions: –Why did you start? –What did you do, and how? –What did you find? –What do your findings mean?

If your paper is about a new method, the last two questions might be replaced with: –What are the advantages of the method? –How well does it work?

Preface (optional) Contents List of Figures List of Tables

Chapter 1. Introduction Give an overview of the problem and state the hypothesis that your thesis presents

Chapter 2. Review of the literature Present previous work in this area that is relevant to the approach you have taken or that makes a complete story

Chapter 3. Methods Describe the methods and materials of your work. This might be: –the details of existing theory, –mathematical developments, –experimental procedures, and –details about equipment

Chapter 4 to n. Results Give the experiments you conducted and the results you found Introduce each experiment with the particular hypothesis you were testing in that experiment Give the results clearly in tables or graphs, and discuss how they relate to the hypothesis

Chapter n+1. Discussion and Conclusion Draw together all your results and discuss how they relate to the unifying hypothesis from the Introduction

Bibliography Appendices

Latex stuff \documentclass[12pt, a4paper]{book} % preamble setting up formatting details \parindent 0pt \parskip 5pt \renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{1.5}

\begin{document} \begin{titlepage} % design of title page here \end{titlepage} \pagenumbering{roman} \tableofcontents

\chapter{Title of first chapter} \pagenumbering{arabic} \input{chap1} \chapter{Title of second chapter} \input{chap2} % Continue until all chaps are included \bibliographystyle{plain} \bibliography{refs} \end{document}

Not that with the \input command, the file is not stand-alone Latex You can intersperse \input commands with other text Page numbering and cross-referencing is not handled correctly

\chapter{Introduction} There are two sections to this chapter: \input{firstsection} \input{secondsection}

You can see from the really complex figure in Figure~\ref{complex} that my theory is better than yours. \begin{figure} \input{myfigure1} \caption{My complex figure.} \label{complex} \end{figure}

\documentclass{…} \begin{document} \include{firstfile} \include{secondfile} … \include{lastfile} \end{document}

\documentclass{…} \includeonly{secondfile} \begin{document} \include{firstfile} \include{secondfile} … \include{lastfile} \end{document}

\includeonly{firstbit,lastbit}