Transcript Slide 1

Week 6. Other thesis elements
MSc Methodology Seminar I
Dr. Felipe Orihuela-Espina
Outline
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2.
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4.
5.
Justification and Motivación
Contribution
Framing
Scope, limitations and assessment
Publications plan
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JUSTIFICATION AND
MOTIVATION
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Justification and Motivation
 You do not take over an MSc/PhD because you
are bored at home…
 …but because there is a real need to understand
a phenomena
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Economical
Scientific
Academic
Others
 Nope! “…because I need it to get my degree” is NOT
a valid justification even if it is the only real one
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Justification and Motivation
 The justification identifies an open problem in
science or an existing challenge for the society.
 E.g.; Stroke affects over 200,000 new patients in
Mexico annually
 The motivation identifies why is it necessary to
act to solve the problem or why we need to get
that extra knowledge
 E.g.; The quality of life of stroke survivors is severely
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affected by leaving them depending on third people.
The cost to health systems of rehabilitation therapies
exceed such and such amount.
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Justification and Motivation
 Justification and motivation often go hand
in hand.
 A strong justification is at times sufficient
motivation.
 For science; justification is sufficient
 As long as there is a gap in the knowledge, it is
worth spending effort to understand it.
 For governments and funding bodies,
motivation is often more important.
 Nobody will fund things which are perceived as
unuseful for the society (whether at present time or
in the future).
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Justification and Motivation
 Research hypothesis statement
 It demands a good analysis of the requisites.
 They may change as you progress, but the
more honest way to proceed is to keep it fixed
and if necessary when writing your thesis
state both, the original hypothesis and the
new one explaining why the change of mind
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CONTRIBUTION TO SCIENCE
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Contribution to science
 Contributions
 Indicate what new knowledge have you
generated
 If collateral achievements are worth (specific new
algorithms, databases/corpus, new tools,
innovative analysis approaches, etc), then state
these as well
 These by themselves are insufficient to guarantee a
degree
 In MSc thesis, this is often a strong weakness; students
tend to focus on collateral achievements rather than on
the main contribution.
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Contribution to science
 Contributions in your field vs contribution to
science
 Depending on the reviewer or panelist, they may have
different expectations:
 If you are presenting your thesis in a computing department,
some reviewers/panelists may expect your contribution to be
specifically in computing disregarding multidisciplinary
efforts.
 …or perhaps you find yourself assessed by some external
who doesn’t care of “where” it is being presented and instead
wants to see how your contribution impacts to science in
general and other fields in particular
 There is no guaranteed success recipe. It is your
responsibility to be able to defend your contribution.
 Ensure that you understand WHY it is a contribution
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FRAMING
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Framing
 The framing refers to
 The main project or research line that includes your thesis-
 Example: Suppose that your supervisor has a funded project by the
country research council, and that your thesis will contribute to this
project. Then your framing will be something like: “This work has been
carried out as part of the activities of project 123456 funded by the
National Research Council.”
 The collaboration with the private or public sector or perhaps
another higher education institution
 Example: “This work is part of the ongoing collaboration between Intel
and INAOE under the agreement 123456 intended to favour research
secondments by students.”
 Disclosure of any conflicts of interest
 Example: “This research was partially funded by THE COMPANY.” Note
that the company, may have commercial interests which may not
adhere to scientific standards
 Example: “This research has been funded with a scholarship by the
National Research Council” Note that the NRC interest is training
human resources and may have a political agenda (e.g. ensuring a
number of graduates per year –regardless of the quality-, etc)
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Framing
 If you don’t include your framing, then the
justification and motivation may need of
additional elements.
 If your thesis is already part of a funded
project, then the limits of that project also
apply to your thesis.
 Example: If the project was granted to count
cocoroaches in the tropical Africa, then nobody can
ask you to generalize your counting algorithm to
also consider other bugs, or other geographical
areas, etc.
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Framing
 In engineering thesis, framing is absolutely
a must!
 In physical and social sciences, framing is
usually seen as a lesser part and most
times obviated.
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SCOPE, LIMITATIONS AND
ASSESSMENT
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Scope and limitations
 Perhaps one of the most common
mistakes made by students is
miscalculating the scope and limitations of
their research.
 Too large and you’ll be unable to succeed in
the allowed timeframe
 Too small and you’ll risk lacking relevance to
get a degree
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Scope and limitations
 Clearly indicate the limits of your work
 The MSc/PhD is not the moment to get a Nobel
prize
 Try to be realistic, it is easy to under-/overestimate your capacity
 It is at times hard to differentiate limits from
your goal
 If too short; maybe not enough to get the degree
 If too ambituous; maybe unfeasible and unable to
defend
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Scope and limitations
 Goals and limits
 Not complying with a goal is a severe fault if not
justified
 Again, justified deviations are acceptable
 …but even more acceptable is to stick to original statements
and describe why haven’t they been achieved as planned
 A time limitation is, more often than not, insufficient
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 …that’s why you put your limits in the protocol!
A deviation from the topic is a weak justification.
 In that case, a new protocol would have been required
Complications arise during research and errors on the
hypothesis based on new evidence collected during
the thesis are strong justifications
 That is what the thesis is all about!
©Dr. Felipe Orihuela Espina (2006)
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Scope and limitations
 Goals and limits
 Goals and limits should have been defined a
priori,
 …but truth is many do “adjust” them to what
has been achieved
 Watch out! This ensures that you comply but it is
often considered dishonest.
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Scope and limitations
 Goals and limits
 Restate your original goals if necessary but try to
keep them as close as possible to the originally
stated in the protocol
 Time and money affecting the goals constraints
should be explicitly declared
 In engineering, and as well in computer science,
they should be quantitative if possible
 Limits can still be described in terms of what it
has not been done
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Defining the scope: The abstract
 If it is well written, the abstract should
clarify the scope of your thesis.
 In a thesis, the abstract is about 1 pg long
 After reading the abstract the reader must
know:
 What was the problem before this thesis
 What has been your contribution
 The highlights of your findings
 How this thesis impact science
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Defining limits
 Limits are often stated in terms of what’s
goind to be excluded
 In engineering it often comes bounded by
the project itself
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Defining limits: The title
 The title is a good place to start defining
your limits
 The title must strictly stick to the developed
research
 …and not to the phenomenon or general field
investigated
 Accuracy should reign over generality
 Be scrupulously precise in the use of
technical terms
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Defining limits: The title
 A weak title might be misleading
 …specifically, it might lead to false
expectations
 …and that include your panel!
 A good title might help a correct search
 Rules are similar to those of the protocol
 …however this is final! This is what would be
indexed by engines
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Defining limits: The title
 Do not worry if title is a bit long
 …as long as it is justified
 …but if you find yourself having a rather long title,
suspect that you are not being concise
 If the more important part of the research is
the methodology itself over its application,
then subtitles are often a convinience
 Example: Database access through the web
using ASP: Application to Probesi
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Assessment
 Assessment refers to how do you want your
thesis to be understood.
 It indicates what specific area of science are
you contributing to or what problem of
engineering are you tackling.
 Note how this is different from your contributions.
 The assessment allows you to bring the
reader to your field.
 …ergo avoiding questions too close to your
panelists’ expertise! ;)
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Assessment
 The reader must be directed to what you want him/her
to get/extract from your thesis.
 Example: If your thesis is multidisciplinary; do you want it
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to be evaluated just because of your contribution to
computing where multidisciplinarity only refers to the
application? Or is it precisely the crossover of disciplines
which makes your work relevant?
Example: If your thesis is constrained to computing; do
you want it to be understood as an analytical or empirical
contribution? Why did you choose it to be
analytical/empirical and what are the consequences?
Example: If your thesis involves generating a new
algorithm; what is it that makes your algorithm different
from a engineeering project?
 Please restrain to look like a fool by saying that engineering is
not science.
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Assessment
 In general, the assessment helps the
reviewers to guide and bound their questions
to only what you consider important or
foundamental in your thesis.
 Beware! If you do not explicitly give your
assessment, then you are leaving the door open
to any questions…
 …and you won’t have the excuse “…but my
thesis is about pattern recognition not about
graph theory”. I give monkeys; you should have
tell in your asessment
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Asessment
 Do not underestimate the benefit of
including a good assessment.
 Assessment is not about telling the panel the
qualification you expect for your work
 …but about telling the reader how should the
thesis be interpreted and contextualized
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PUBLICATIONS PLAN
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Publications plan
 The publications plan is not part of your
thesis, but of your protocol.
 You may omit it…however it is an excelent
measure of your progress.
 Check your compliance with it.
 Revise it if necessary
 After your PhD, when you become a postdoc
you will more often than not be judged on
your publications plan.
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Publications plan
 A publications plan include for every publication:
1. The estimated submission time
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Note that for conferences there may be very specific
deadlines
2. Target: Journal or conference.
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Be specific as the different targets have different audiences
etc
3. The research question, finding or advance to be
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presented. This also include
1. The associated experiments and/or mathematical proofs
2. The expected results
Scope and aim
 Check the journal/conference scope and aims
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Publications plan
 Be ambitious but realistic
 You are unlikely to publish in Nature or
Science during your MSc
 …but nothing prevents you from aiming high;
look for the top conferences and journals in
your field
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Publications plan
 Be ambitious but realistic
 Take into account the time necessary for designing your experiment,
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collecting your data, analsying it and writing the manuscript
Experimental design (a good one) can consume easily one or two
months
 Including some piloting, some unstructured simulations (i.e. out of the experiment
itself e.g. to find values for controlled variables), etc
 Depending on your field data harvesting may be time consuming
 Synthetic computer simulations which last 2 seconds (or a thousand for the sake
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of it), or reusing existing databases is negligible;
I’m talking here about months of “real” data collection (e.g. clinical data,
agricultural data, etc)
 Analysis and interpretation can take quite some time if thorough enough
 While the other bits are more or less standard across publications; it is a good
analysis and interpretation what distinguish a first class paper from toilet paper
 And do not underestimate how long it will take you to write the
manuscript especially when you are inexperienced.
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Publications in your thesis
 In your thesis you will be required to
privide a list of the publications derived
from it
 Include all publications derived from the thesis
 Clearly separate the journal from then
conferences
 Clearly separate peer-reviewed ones from
others.
 Show that you have read adequately by
publishing your theoretical and reference
frameworks as a review
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Publications in your thesis
 Rule of thumb;
 A thesis supported by outstanding record of
publications is a safe shot
 Go well beyond the minima to comply with your
institution demands
 A thesis without published back up would be
thoroughly questioned and is unlikely to be
enough to grant the degree
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THANKS, QUESTIONS?
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