
Lol my thesis – Summing up years of work in one sentence - anigbrowl
http://lolmythesis.com/
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gusmd
This is awesome! Some of these "honest" titles are much more clear than the
original, academic ones. We tend to use buzzwords/keywords to try and get
noticed or even "respected", but it is all complete bullshit. Research should
be informative. My submission:

"Acoustic treatment materials for aircraft engines work (sort of), but we are
not sure how; airplanes still loud as f..k"

(On the modelling and characterization of acoustic liners under grazing flow.)

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dredmorbius
See also the Annals of Improbable Research's 24/7 lectures:

"Each 24/7 Lecturer explains their topic twice:

"First, a complete, technical description in 24 seconds

"Then, a clear summary that anyone can understand in 7 words"

[http://www.improbable.com/ig/24-7/](http://www.improbable.com/ig/24-7/)

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contingencies
_Decisiveness is overrated._ \- Philosophy, University of California, Santa
Cruz

 _Rocks that are next to each other in Massachusetts now were also next to
each other 400 million years ago._ \- Geology, Amherst College

 _Rats will go to great lengths to earn a pellet of sugar, and even more so
when on the right kinds of drugs._ \- Neuroscience, University of California,
Los Angeles

Older favourites from lolmythesis, in my fortune clone @
[https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup](https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup)

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neonbat
This is clearly a superior format for explaining papers. Research should be
accessible and it isn't. It really doesn't make much sense to have the
academic profession riddled with "abstractese." That is, language that even
educated people have trouble understanding without a definition sheet.

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thret
This site would be a lot more interesting if it could link you directly to
each thesis.

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markbnj
Yep, that would be awesome. I bet a lot of them are behind auth walls, though.

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pbhjpbhj
I'd expect you could at least get a formal abstract, as with published
academic papers.

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kriro
"""I made some nearly imperceptible changes to a piece of software, and then I
wrote a paper about it.""" Yeah those are pretty common :D

This one seems relevant: """If you stop being such an arrogant asshole, your
startup may succeed"""

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bnegreve
Interestingly, I find these blatantly honest short sentences more informative
than abstracts.

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seanmcdirmid
If you like this, you might like [http://tinytocs.org](http://tinytocs.org)
also (computer science papers with a 140 character limit).

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maroonblazer
My fave:

"People can’t even with 'I can’t even.'

I Can’t Even Because Language: Investigating Attitudes and Spoken Use of
Internet Phrases

Linguistics, Emory University"

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_abattoir
I mean - linguistically speaking, it's fascinating. I really want to read this
paper.

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exDM69
Here's mine: "A graphics hardware feature added to support texture
virtualization is really helpful for implementing texture virtualization".

(relevant OpenGL spec: EXT_sparse_texture2)

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anigbrowl
_if someone notices a sound designer’s work, they’re doing it wrong so
therefore nobody ever recognises good sound designers which makes them sad_

Depressingly accurate, which is why I decided to get out of the sound
department.

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tormeh
The one I'm writing now: "Creating and implementing deterministic
multithreading programming language significantly harder than hoped"

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seanmcdirmid
It's not that hard. I'm thinking the song "let it go" can help (define
determinism as an eventual goal; at least, that is the approach I find that
works for me).

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tormeh
It's not that it's theoretically hard, but writing a compiler with
typechecking and all is just a lot of work. It's a master thesis, btw, not a
doctoral one.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
My own project, Glitch uses replay to work out glitches (bubbles of non
determinism in a deterministic execution), it incidentally also makes writing
incremental compilers easy (see [http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/people/smcdirm/managedti...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/people/smcdirm/managedtime.aspx)), and I recently used it for a new type
checker (see
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__28QzBdyBU&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__28QzBdyBU&feature=youtu.be)).
Ok, it's still a lot of work, but if you look at the problem you are solving,
solving it can make the compiler writing aspect easier also.

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carlob
Mine: "Can you sequence DNA by unzipping it? No."

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Squarel
Mine is: "Plants in cooler regions do not like hot weather"

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tormeh
Some of these are better than the actual titles...

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amelius
Isn't the thesis title supposed to do just this?

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bnegreve
Unlike the title this also include the main result and a bit of derision.

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golergka
"I just wanted to write about Kanye, idk." doesn't even have a link to the
paper ;(

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VishRamesh
Starting graduate school in the Fall! Looking forward to contributing to this
site.

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pearjuice
Seems like this would be a good format for buzzfeed as it leaves out all
relevant context, completely stamps on all the hard work put into these
thesises and packs it into a nice less-than 140 characters sharable format.

