thesis writing

a few good links :
http://bbcr.uwaterloo.ca/~brecht/thesis-hints.html
http://unicorn.sfsu.edu/~murphy/suggestions.htm

Some excerpts form the first link which in turn is adapted from "The Guaranteed Mackworth Thesis Formula", by Alan Mackworth, revised by Tim Brecht
Abstract

• one page stating what the thesis is about
• highlight the contributions of the thesis

Chapter 1: Introduction (~5-10 pages)

• Thesis Statement (one or two sentences)
• What is your thesis about and what have you done?
• If you have a hypothesis what is it?
• How will you test (prove/disprove) your hypothesis?
• Motivation
• Why is this problem you've worked on important
• Goals / Objectives
• What are you trying to do and why?
• How will you or the reader know if or when you've met your objectives?
• **** Contributions *****
• What is new, different, better, significant?
• Why is the world a better place because of what you've done?
• What have you contributed to the field of research?
• What is now known/possible/better because of your thesis?
• Outline of the thesis (optional)

Chapter 2: Background / Related Work (~8-20 pages)

• More than a literature review
• Organize related work - impose structure
• Be clear as to how previous work being described relates to your own.
• The reader should not be left wondering why you've described something!!
• Critique the existing work - Where is it strong where is it weak? What are the unreasonable/undesirable assumptions?
• Identify opportunities for more research (i.e., your thesis) Are there unaddressed, or more important related topics?
• After reading this chapter, one should understand the motivation for and importance of your thesis

Chapter 3: Theory / Solution / Program / Problem (~15-30 pages)

• continuing from Chapter 2 explain the issues
• outline your solution / extension / refutation

Chapter 4: Implementation / Formalism (~15-30 pages)

• not every thesis has or needs an implementation

Chapter 5: Results and Evaluation (~15-30 pages)

• adequacy, efficiency, productiveness, effectiveness (choose your criteria, state them clearly and justify them)
• be careful that you are using a fair measure, and that you are actually measuring what you claim to be measuring
• if comparing with previous techniques those techniques must be described in Chapter 2
• be honest in evaluation
• admit weaknesses

Chapter 6: Conclusions and Future Work (~5-10 pages)

• State what you've done and what you've found
• Summarize contributions (achievements and impact)
• Outline open issues/directions for future work

Bibliography / References

• Include references to:
• credit others for their work
• help to distinguish your work from others
• provide pointers to further detailed readings
• support your claims (if evidence can be found in others work)
• Ensure that ALL bibliographic entries are complete including: authors, title, journal or conference, volume and number of journals, date of publication and page numbers. Be careful to at least be consistent in punctuation.
• Learn how to use a good typesetting program that can track and format bibliographic references (e.g., groff, latex, frame).
• Within the text of the thesis, a reference with a number of people can be referred to as Lastname et al. (where et al appears in italics and the al is followed by a period).
• My personal view is that URL's are not valid bibliographic references. They and their contents change and they often contain material that has not been refereed.

Appendix

• Include technical material that would disrupt the flow of the thesis.
• Included for curious or disbelieving readers