

Why no one will ever read your thesis - kentf
http://kent.ewakened.com

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dlevine
No one will ever read my thesis because I wrote it to fulfill a bunch of
requirements set up by my program and my advisors. I didn't actually write it
for the average person to read - it probably isn't even all that readable by
most standards. But it flew through the approval process, which was my
intention.

After two years in grad school, I was looking to finish, and not to win an
award. I could imagine that PhD students are even more desperate after 4-6
years in school.

~~~
kentf
haha wow... so true

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tetha
Basically he is talking about the trench war one has in scientific writing.
Call one side side A, and the others side B, and imagine there is a student
who tried to read a thesis and did not get it. Side A will say: "Well, he is
too stupid to unterstand my thesis", while Side B will say: "well, he might
not know enough basics to understand your thesis, but I rather think that you
just wrote incomprehensible gibberish".

I second his part about the informal parts very, very much, even though I
would call this 'informal part' examples and motivations. Tell us in simple
examples what your definition means, what your algorithm does, how your
consideration works in this simple example, even if the example might be
borderline with wrongness and oversimplification. It helps a lot, even though
it is hard to find good examples :)

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sketerpot
Simon Peyton-Jones manages to write papers that are genuinely readable. He has
some good advice on the subject:

[http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/people/simonpj/papers...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/people/simonpj/papers/giving-a-talk/giving-a-talk.htm)

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hopeless
This was what I wrote in my post-PhD failure write-up:

"It is important to understand, from the outset of the PhD, who your target
audience is: it’s you. I remember hearing that, on average, 1.6 people will
read your PhD thesis. I’m pretty sure that includes yourself, your spouse,
your supervisor, your second supervisor and your examiner (yeah, that’s
technically 5 people. If someone says they’ve read your thesis, they’re
probably lying -- they read page 9). You have to accept, that no one in the
world will want to wade through this document. Ever."

[http://jamie.ideasasylum.com/2008/07/things-i-learnt-
during-...](http://jamie.ideasasylum.com/2008/07/things-i-learnt-during-and-
about-my-phd/)

~~~
mark_h
Oh man, that rang true! (I just read the whole post). I did manage to finish
mine a few years ago, largely running on fumes and requiring a re-write
largely from scratch after the initial examination with a near-nervous-
breakdown during each write-up... but other than that I think every point
resonated.

------
mattheww
I accept the fact that not many people will read my thesis.

Scientists in the field will not read it because they are not interested in
all of the details of the analysis. They are only interested in the result,
which will be published in a four page paper that only broadly explains the
methods of the analysis.

My mother will not read it because I won't be writing it for her. When she
asks me what I did, I will explain it in a way that she can understand. If I'm
lucky, some science journalist will write an article about it, and I can send
her the link.

------
larsberg
There are multiple audiences: 1) peer scholars familiar in your area of
research trying to determine if you really did and understood what you said
you did and understood 2) someone who is not a scholar and wants to learn
about your topic

Write a separate paper for #2. Use contractions and exclamation points.
Present related work in a framework that tells a good story instead of that
catalogs the space. Skip correctness details and drill in on implementation
specifics.

Something for both audiences will just be too long and boring for either.

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hack_edu
_Each academic paper, thesis, dissertation etc. should be written in two
parts: One formal and one informal._

This should serve as a reminder to all researchers and writers; write a good
abstract

Abstracts not only help the informal reader understand the concept. They
introduce the reader to the broad stroke of the research and greatly assist
information workers in their discovery.

------
swolchok
Every professor I have actually talked to about what constitute a thesis has
professed the staple method: you take your best research papers and staple
them together. This is an exaggeration, of course, because the document
actually has to flow, but I have the definite impression that you can get a
Ph.D. in computer security with multiple at least somewhat discrete projects.

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tybris
Too late. Many people already did. It helps if you produced something other
people can base their research on.

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gchpaco
Once I was writing a simulator for a reversible CPU, and the best
documentation available was the man's PhD and Master's dissertations. When I
told my instructor about it, he said "geez, I hope nobody ever has to read
_my_ thesis" which I thought was sort of an odd concept.

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dave_au
I can think of about 10-15 people worldwide who might be interested in my
thesis, and since 3 of them are going to be examiners and all of them know
each other it seems like a pretty quick way to disseminate the information.
Well, except for the writing time... :)

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beefman
Tell the University you refuse to make it double-spaced. Then maybe I will
read it.

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TriinT
No one will ever read your thesis... if it sucks. I have read many, many
theses. In fact, I prefer to read theses than conference papers, because a
thesis does not have as many editorial constraints.

This kind of generalization is dumb. "No one will read your thesis". Is that a
law of nature? Does that apply to Claude Shannon? His M.Sc. showed how to map
Boolean logic to electric circuits. I mean, who would ever want to read such a
thing, right? ;-)

OK, enough of the title. I am all for making research work available and
accessible, just as long as the quality of the work is not sacrificed.
Research will always be difficult. It can't be made _easy_ by adopting a new
writing style, but it can be made _easier_.

~~~
shard
_This kind of generalization is dumb._

So is reading hyperbole as logical fact. It's his thesis that needs to be
accurate and unambiguous, not his blog entries.

~~~
kentf
Sorry shard... didn't mean to strike a chord... it was a poor choice of title.

I am merely saying that we should bring the best parts of fiction and
storytelling to academic writing as I believe more people would be read it and
gain inspiration / insight from it.

~~~
shard
I am actually commenting on TriinT's comment, not on your title. I'm not very
agitated by hyperbole in blog titles. I also agree with your proposal that
academic writing have informal sections which explain things in a manner
that's not obfuscated for those not in the field.

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ilyak
In software, you can write code, why bother writing theses?

Write some useful code, open-source it, promote it with talks on conferences.

Noone wants your "research".

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bhseo
No one will read your post after you write a new blog post and the link to
your blog's root has nothing to do with the HN title.

