Chapter Breakdown
Abstract (<= 1 page) * 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 * You should clearly and precisely define all of the key concepts dealt with in the rest of the thesis, and teach the reader what s/he needs to know to understand the rest of the 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