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How to Write a Master's Thesis

NLP Master's Thesis from Enrollment to Defense

This tutorial could also be called “things I wish I had known when I was writing my diploma thesis”. This guideline is intended to ease writing your master's thesis (and hopefully, to produce better theses and successful defenses, as a result) and what better way is there than provide you with a spectrum of information I gained being on both sides of the trench. I'm going to navigate you through the process of your master's thesis assignment, writing and defense. The guideline is mostly fitted to a typical experimental NLP master's thesis but I'm sure you can tweak it to other situation once you get the general idea.

Timeline

I don't think I can emphasize enough: start EARLY. Seriously. You will make your life much easier if you start programming, measuring and writing (that especially!) in good time. Most opponents can recognize hasty writing hurriedly finished over the last week before deadline. As for the question what is the minimum time in which I can write a thesis, let's pretend I never heard the question.

The exact dates of everything that happens at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, such as beginnings and ends of semesters, deadlines for courses and exams enrollments, deadlines for theses submissions and theses exams, is strictly bound by an official Academic Calendar of the faculty. Look out for the exact deadlines of the required actions in the current version.

With that in mind, let's say that a typical master's curriculum takes two academic years (four semesters). Master's thesis writing is officially a three-semester course, consisting of three subsequent (!) semesters each of which you must subscribe to in the Study Information System (SIS), in the appointed deadline.

That generates roughly the following course of action:

So each of both parts is offered separately in the Study Information System (SIS), each of them must be enrolled in the required deadline and they can be taken jointly or separately in three possible terms throughout the year: summer (June), autumn (September) and winter (February). Please note that the deadline for registration differs for each of the terms. There is a preferred way, when everything went well, and that is the summer final examination after the 2nd year's summer semester, taking both the defence and examination, which places the registration for both examinations and the submission of the thesis somewhere to May.

Survivor Advice:

“One thing I would like to do better next time (and advise students to do better in their first time) is time management: The programming part should be finished in a half time assigned to bachelor's thesis (even in case it is the main part of the master's thesis). In the end, it will delay and there will be a lot to correct and improve. The experimenting, evaluation, text writing and corrections (corrections!!!) will take more time than one expects. And even if it is not the case - then it's great, at least one is not stressed out from submitting at the last time and will have some spare time.”'

Working on the Thesis

Writing the Thesis

How Much Is Enough

The very fist question I usually get is “How much do I have to write?”. As far as I know, there is no official number anywehere, so I'm just going to speak from experience: An experimental NLP master's thesis most probably non-rejectable on the basis of “too few text” if it consists of absolute minimum of 40-50 A4 pages of content, not including the front page, acknowledgements, table of contents, bibliography & appendices. That is, the Conclusion Section should appear on page 40-50.

Me or We

Most scientific contributions were achieved in a team and it is therefore customary to write publications in plural, as in “We present”, “We implemented” and “We conclude that…”. If you are a single author of the work, though, opinions differ on the choice of singular (“I”) and plural (“We”). Some even say a third person should be used as in “The researcher found out that…” It is generally advisable to avoid the singular/plural choice wherever you can by using impersonal passive voice, such as “The research shows that…”, “The findings suggest that…”. The active voice singular (“I”) would then be kept for sentences in which you underscore your particular contribution: “I implemented”, “I measured”. Even the use of “We” throughout the thesis in all places where you are clearly referring to you as a single author, is acceptable. Using a plural “we” instead of singular “I” in scientific writings is supposedly called ''pluralis auctoris'' and Wikipedia says it is more common towards the East (hence the Wiki page is only in a few languages, including Czech, but excluding English). That being said, the choice is really yours.

The Content

An typical experimental NLP thesis usually consists of these parts:

I describe each section in detail on a separate page.

Typesetting and Formatting

This is an area which you can get right and get some plus points for very low cost. Correct typesetting and formatting can be sitted through with a little of diligence and patience even if one is no Einstein. You won't get complaints for your thesis not being rocket science, but you can get a lot of complaints for poor presentation of your work. All of this can be avoided, if you:

Referencing, Plagiarism and These Things (Don't Skip Me!)

Plagiarism is a big NO-NO in science. It's so big you can get in serious trouble if caught. The trouble is, many people are not quite sure what plagiarism is and what it isn't. Sometimes, there is a grey area, but sometimes, the borderline is pretty clear.

Generally, plagiarism is presenting someone else's work/idea/text/source code as your own. Specifically, anything that appears in your thesis and is not referenced or is not general knowledge, is being presented by you as your work/idea/text/source code, unless properly referenced. Some very obvious examples of things that should be referenced are:

Every time you copy/reproduce a sentence/definition/figure/table, the reference must be repeated. It is not OK to state in the beginning of the section “And from now on, I shall draw from publication XY” and then go on three pages freely mixing your text and sentences from XY. With some exceptions, it is also not OK to copy entire paragraphs or pages, even if they are properly referenced, as you are supposed to write you own thesis, not copy someone else's work. It is however allright if you introduce/explain an idea with a proper reference and then discuss the idea in the next three paragraphs without referencing it again and again. If your discussion, however, replicates someone else's opinion, you should reference it, e.g. “Our data support hypothesis ABC, as well as results of REF-to-XY.”

Less obvious and not always necessary references may be required by:

* sentences like It is (generally) considered that …, It is (generally) thought that … are tricky and will attract attention. By whom it is considered? Ideally they would be supported by references to publications.

Submitting the Thesis

Don't fall in the PDF/A trap! The electronic system requires all submitted PDF in PDF/A format and there is an automatic check for PDF/A. Allow yourself enough time to find out how to convert your PDF into PDF/A (like, not in the last two hours before deadline midnight). Some good advice on PDF/A, unfortunately only in Czech, can be found here.

Final Examination

As has already been said, the final examination consists of two parts:

  1. Master's study defence (obhajoba in Czech): requires submitting the electronic (PDF) and the paper (hardcover) version of the thesis in the appointed deadline, enrolling for the exam in the study information system (SIS) (again, the in the official deadline) and obviously, showing up for the defence. More about the actual thesis defence later.
  2. Master's state final examinations (státnice in Czech): requires registering for the examination in the required deadline and showing up for the examination. Also more on the examination later.

So each of both parts is offered separately in the study information system (SIS), each of them must be enrolled in the required deadline and they can be taken jointly or separately in three possible terms throughout the year: summer (June), autumn (September) and winter (February). Please note that the deadline for registration differs for each of the terms. Actually, there is a preferred way, when everything went well, and that is the summer final examination after the 2nd year's summer semester, taking both the defence and examination, placing the registration for both examinations and the submission of the thesis somewhere to May.

In fact, the defence and the final state examination are usually organized in two different days with span about a week. One day accommodates all defences, the other on all final state examinations. The reason for this is purely organizational: different committees have to meet for each event.

Thesis Defence

Final State Examination


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