Hints and requirements for writing a thesis
This document lists hints and requirements for writing a thesis. It is meant to guide you through the process and help you avoid common pitfalls.
Structure
- The work must tell a story.
- It must be clear,
- what the problem or question is,
- what approaches have been taken so far,
- what approach your own work takes and why exactly this approach,
- what results have been achieved with your own approach
- how these are to be classified and evaluated
- what else could be done in the future.
- The part about your own work/own thoughts must be the larger part.
Tips for writing
Write down the chapter structure
- Introduction/motivation
- Related work and basics
- Own implementation
- Evaluation and classification of the results
- Conclusion and outlook
write one sentence for each chapter about what is to be told there
gradually divide each chapter into sub-chapters and write a sentence for each sub-chapter stating what it should say at the end.
then complete the individual sentences and write them in detail. Always give a source for each assertion from the beginning.
Sources
- Each source needs an author and a date - ask yourself for each source: who wrote it down, when and why? Then deduce from the answer whether it is a useful source of information for your work or not.
- Rule of thumb: One source per page.
- For methods/algorithms, cite the original source and not just the book or survey paper. Always look for the oldest source.
- For websites, always include the retrieval date and check again shortly before submission.
- Pro tip: Instead of websites, always link to the Internet Archive and/or add the retrieval date.
- You can also add websites to the archive yourself.
- Pro tip: Instead of websites, always link to the Internet Archive and/or add the retrieval date.
- Citation style: IEEE is my preferred style, preferably with “[AuthorYear]” as an abbreviation instead of a consecutive number (as done for Siggraph publications). You can find further infomration on the page of the University of Pittsburgh. However, it is important that you decide on a style and use it consistently.
Starting points for research
- For computer graphics topics, look for latest Siggraph papers as a starting point: Stephen Hill’s Blog or Ke-Sen Huang’s page and/or take the Eurographics State-of-the-art (STAR) reports: EG 2024
- For computer vision topics, Szeliski’s book is a good start.
- If there is already a central paper, you can also try Connected Papers or Research Rabbit
- If you already have a few papers, use Scholar Inbox to not miss anything new.
Language
- The verb must always match the object.
- Incorrect example: “In Maier’s article, four networks were created using method XY.” –> correct: “Maier describes how they created four networks using method XY.”
- An article/document cannot create a neural network. That’s what the authors did. An article itself can only contain information or something is passively presented, described or illustrated in the article.
- Incorrect example: “In Maier’s article, four networks were created using method XY.” –> correct: “Maier describes how they created four networks using method XY.”
- When quoting, always quote a person first and foremost and reproduce what they have said or written. In the case of websites in particular, look for the publishers and authors and quote them. If it is a company or consortium, personalize it and name it as the author.