ThesisChecklist

From Robin

Revision as of 09:14, 28 March 2022

Structure

• If using the Ifi latex example thesis, do not use the content (divsion in parts, etc.)
• The Nifty gadget structure is a good starting point / checklist
• Example structure:
  • Introduction
    • General introduction leading up to the state of the art in the field and challenges that need to be addressed
    • Objective / research questions
    • Contributions of this thesis to the field
    • Outline
  • Background / Related Work
  • Methods / Implementation
  • Experiments & Results
    • General experimental setup
    • Experiment1
      • Setup
      • Results
      • Analysis
    • ExperimentN
  • Discussion
    • Discussion (Taking a step back and interpreting/discussing at a general level what you have learned/implemented)
    • Conclusion
    • Future Work

• Figures and tables
  • Reference in the text to all figures and tables
  • If figures are not self-explanatory, explain either in caption or in text. Do not duplicate the explanatory text.
  • Line-based figures should be included as vector graphics, and definitely not as low resolution images with compression artifacts.
  • Try to keep figure fonts/text about the same size as in the text
  • Do not copy-paste figures from other work, unless you have author/publisher consent (from same research group). If remaking a figure, refer to the original in the caption
  • Creative commons / similar. Can be used. E.g. flickr, wikimedia commons.
    • Remember proper attribution which is a license requirement, Creative Commons: Best practices for attribution
    • Check how you can use the works Creative Commons: Licenses
  • Figures should be centered and no text around
  • If using "list of figures" in latex, please use caption summaries (using []) to avoid a very long list

• Grammar and spelling
  • Typos and grammar mistakes should be avoided, and one needs to actively work with this
    • Copy-paste to Word or similar for a grammar + syntax check. Only syntax checking is not sufficient
    • Have a human read through as well!

• References
  • If you want to refer to a website without any specific document, one can include it in a footnote (as to not "spam" the reference list)

Thesis outline, chapter by chaper

Introduction

• Brief intro to the area (and problem)
• Brief state-of-the-art in the research field
• Move on to the challenge - what you are planning to do to fix this / why you want to do this
• Research/thesis goals/questions (with sub-goals)
• Contributions - your own contributions with this thesis work
• Outline / structure of the thesis (what you will do in each chapter)

Methods / Implementation

• A concept figure could be nice to introduce the full setup
• Software, hardware, tools (you can put this in a separate chapter if you have a lot)
  • Brief overview over the tool/sw
  • Version numbers, details about computational solutions (E.g. using physX version x.y rigid body solver, DEAP version z.æ, ...)
  • How the tools are connected - overview figure
• what you have developed in your system
  • algorithms (pseudo-code, not source code here), or models (incl. equations)
  • be careful about the divide between your own contribution and previous work here, if writing too much about a concept already developed, move to the background.
• How you use things / experimental setup
  • E.g. using this and that instance of an EA. Multi-objective, NSGA-II
  • How the mutation is implemented, if not standard
  • The fitness/objective function(s)
  • Hyperparameters should go in a table - either here if "global" or in tables for each experiment

Experiments and results

• for each major experiment:
  • description of experiment
  • results - objective without interpretation
  • analysis / discussion - for that specific experiment