Thesis

OK, so it was over ten years since i wrote my MSc Thesis, but since i wrote in it that it shall be available on the Internet under this address, it would be nasty not to have it published. Though in all honesty, it’s a bit crap. You’ve been informed.

View or download my Msc Thesis User Centred Access Control for home networks (if you must).

There are, however, a few lessons learned which i might be able to recall even 10 years post fact.

Have an excellent advisor

Your advisor/instructor is your editor and your coach and, thesistically speaking, your best friend. Remember this when your thesis is published. S/he should have a clear view on what a good thesis work looks like and preferrably have written one, not too insanely long ago. It’s not that all theses (uh, thesises, thesii..?) look the same, but they do share traits. There is a structure, a tone of word, and most of all, a focus (we’ll get to this in the next paragraph), and your advisor should be well clued about these. S/he should be able to spend enough time and effort on you and your work without actually writing it. You should be able to communicate often and effortlessly.

Write about a well defined subject

This is probably the hardest thing of them all, especially as you’ve probably never written a technical paper before this. Well, i never had, but i hope things have changed a bit since. My thesis ended up a mish-mash of things and even though i had a fairly precise subject, well over half of my thesis was a bunch of background on things that were interesting but in no way about the subject itself.

In the end, most of my time writing the thesis was spent on rewriting bits, changing word order and in much angst not really producing anything of substance. Focus. Really. It’s hard, but it’s the right thing.

If you can, start sketching at a high level. Use a mind map. Then edit and iterate. Be inspired. Graft out the things that are good but just don’t fit in.

If you’re like me, you’ll find loads of interesting subjects and viewpoints when reading other articles and you want to include them all into your thesis! Don’t do this. Think of what is important to your thesis. It’s okay to change the direction, even the subject of your thesis (if your advisor and professor are okay with it!). It’s way better to have a deep thesis than a wide one. This i only understood way after the fact. Don’t be me.

I know it’s hard to discard stuff you’ve poured your soul to write. Instead of just throwing stuff away, leave it as fodder for future writing, be they blog articles or actual technical articles.

Have an infrastructure

Version control is your friend. Make a git repo for your thesis from day one. Don’t be too fussy about the actual layout, you’ll have plenty of time to muck about before you’re done.

You probably want one directory for the actual thesis, one for ideas, one for meta and misc. Or something like this. Don’t sweat it, just do it. Start version control before writing anything.

git init thesis
cd thesis
echo 'I made this!' > README
git commit -am 'Here we go!'

There! You’ve written something! :)

I needed to accidentally delete my latest thesis source code and manually rebuild it using old code and the latest pdf before understanding this. Don’t be me. Also do backups (properly), even if you use git. You can (semi-)automate this; Dropbox + Time Machine is probably a good enough solution if you’re on a Mac. Also, thirteen years ago, git wasn’t really on my radar, but eventually i started using rcs, because it could work on my computer without the need of any other computer. Again, don’t be me. And use git.

I wrote my thesis in LaTeX because it was the Right Thing to do. I also spent weeks on learning LaTeX (good), tweaking LaTeX (questionable), debuggig LaTeX (frustrating) and just trying to make the damn thing compile (mmwwwaarrgghh!). LaTeX is damn frustrating, but writing my thesis with LaTeX was a learning experience and a tale of much personal growth. A rite of passage. I’ve written my thesis, from scratch. Also, it was quite the satisfaction to actually see my .tex files compile and have them update in the dvi viewer. I guess this is attributable to the IKEA Effect (pdf) because there’s no rational reason why one would have to pour time, effort, frustration and pain in something that is inherently inferior but still something of your … very own. Still, i feel most of my time writing my thesis went to try to get my thesis to actually compile and show up as a pdf.

If i’d write my thesis today, i’d write it in Markdown or Restructured Text (RST; which i don’t know, but understand is way easier than LaTeX and way more powerful than Markdown). If it’s mostly text, you can do with Markdown. If your text contains mathematical formulas – every good thesis should at minimum contain a table, a figure and a mathematical formula – you’re probably better off with RST.

I would not touch Word.

Then, create a workflow to create a beautiful document from your source code. My suggestion is that you use Pandoc, typesetting your PDF document with LaTeX. And if you have some downtime, use Gitlab CI to automagically build a new pdf (and epub!) for each push to your master. If there’s any interest, i can try to find the Makefile i’ve successfully used later to do this.

Make and maintain a reference list

Most of the time writing my thesis was spent reading others' articles. Articles are good because they’re short and mostly to the point – reading a thesis as background material can be valuable but it also takes time!). Don’t worry about finding the “best” article to cite, just search for something (Google Scholar is your friend) and look what articles are cited there. Keep a well groomed list of references on your computer. Include why each reference might be interested, whether you read the article and whether there actually was something worthy within. If you’re using pure LaTeX, this reference list can be used directly in your thesis, even for entries you did not use! Other formats may also support this, or you may have to do some coding.

Reading an article on paper is way more ergonomic than reading it from a screen. Using a highlighter and annotating on paper is satisfactory. Reading a technical paper on a bus will make you look smart in the eyes of people you’d like to look smart to.

Sometimes you find something interesting that doesn’t actually fit within the scope of your thesis. Don’t throw this away, but also don’t “force” it into your thesis. Save it for a later day.

Many technical papers are behind a paywall, but practically all of them have a page with the abstract and their author. If you can’t reach your article, just breathe in and send an email to the author of the paper (or authors, but send one email per author, not a mass email to them all) and ask if you can have a copy. The worst thing you can get is a no, the best thing you can get is an academic who is interested in your work! (no, i wouldn’t go so far as to say “an academic who’s interested in you”, but ymmv ;)

Have a schedule

Most of the time writing my thesis went to reading Piled Higher and Deeper. I would show up at the lab in the morning, spend all morning until lunch reading PhD, have lunch, maybe read some more Phd, see that it’s already afternoon, join the two-o-clock lab coffee, head back to my machine, desperately try and find some interesting articles, maybe read some, change the order of a few sentences and go home feeling miserable.

Don’t be me.

Start the day by doing something productive. Save the Piled Higher and Deeper comic until some time slot before lunch or lab coffee, which’ll give your slot a natural time box. Give yourself sensible days and end the day with some sticky notes on what you should do the next time you come to your computer. And that is what the productive thing you should start with the next morning.

Have a schedule when you meet with your advisor. Learning from how i work now, schedule a five or ten minute meeting each day with your advisor. This will keep you honest and not make unnecessary performance pressure for a “Daily”. Also schedule a longer meeting N times a week (and one on a recurring schedule with your professor, if you can). The longer you have between meetings, the harder it will be to have one.

I didn’t meet often enough and in nothing that looked like a schedule. Don’t be me. That’s probably a good enough advise to encapsulate all of it :)

Know when it’s ready

You can tweak your thesis forever. There is always one more thing. Still, you, and your advisor, will have to know when to say it’s ready. For it’s never done – and with digital technology, it doesn’t have to be. Instead of having the pressure of “is this well enough?”, just call a well-enough version 1.00 and put it in print. You can always write a 1.0.1 and a 1.1 and so on with your online version. You can even provide a “patch” on print to your near and dear.

And finally, for now, know that there really are just two people on Earth that actually read you whole thesis from cover to cover: your advisor and you. Your professor will thumb through the first few pages, make sure his/her name is in the Foreword, estimate the length of the References at the back, and finally ask your instructor what s/he thinks. Your parents will look and probably even read the abstract and then look at the thankyou notes in the foreword (an be really happy if they find themselves there – they did after all finance most of your life up to this). Your friends will browse through the book and look for pictures. How do i know? Because i hid an easter egg somewhere inside the thesis and nobody has called me on it yet. But for you, it is the world and it’s your soul between those covers. Value it. You’re worth it.