

If you had 5 months of time to experiment/research something, what would you do? - thesisist

... in terms of technological concepts, not so much business ideas.<p>Background: I am CS Master in search of a subject for my thesis. The problem with the propositions I come up with is that I think in business ideas (similar to those http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1190974) for useful purposes which (understandably) do not suffice the academic/scientific requirements. However, my department is not really offering any alternatives leaving me in an unfortunate position.<p>With all the creative and innovative minds present here at HN, I would like to ask: If you could write another thesis, what would you cover today? It would also be helpful if you would share what you wrote about previously. And of course, if your former department publishes their thesis offers publicly, links to that would also be appreciated for inspirational purposes. Thanks.
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ig1
1) I'd develop a theory of board games based upon game graphs. I think there's
huge potential in the area, enough to even change the way we think about
games. When viewing games as graphs you can start doing interesting things
like enumerate all games that can be described in N nodes, find isomorphisms
between game sub-graphs, and create a mathematically measurable concept of
"difficulty".

or

2) The application of cryptography to anonymous financial trading. At the
moment a lot of anonymous trading happens via "dark pools" which are third
party providers that match up anonymous counterparties, however this is less
than ideal because you have to have a trusted third party and it also
introduces latency issues.

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josefresco
For me the business ideas lay the groundwork for future technological
exploration and experimentation. If I had 5 months I'd crank out a few
profitable websites and then use those funds to bankroll my future endeavors.
What those are exactly .. I can't say and that may be part of my problem.
Waiting for financial stability to pursue my passions (but I digress)

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jodrellblank
Waiting for Godot more like. Are you comfortable with the idea that you might
never get financial stability and might live the rest of your life and then
die, having never pursued your passions?

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Aegean
What do you like in CS? Web? Computer Architecture? It has to be something
you're interested in and you don't give a clue on that.

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maxwin
Go to your molecular biology department. Talk to them about what research
they're doing and what kind of data they're getting. There should be a lot of
publishable thesis you can find (either building a new bioinformatics tool or
figure out new algorithms to make sense of their data).

