Writing your bachelor thesis
Guidelines and tools

Colloquium 04/14/2014
Center for Information and Language Processing
LMU Munich

David Kaumanns

0.1 Content of this lecture

  1. This colloquium
  2. Your presentation
  3. Your thesis
  4. Citations and references
  5. Writing style
  6. Tools and templates

1 This colloquium

1.1 Motivation

1.2 Protocolls

1.3 Questions/ worries/ need for feedback?

Contact me: david [æt] cis.lmu.de

Offical course site: http://www.cis.uni-muenchen.de/~hs/teach/14s/colloquium/

2 Your presentation

2.1 Medium

2.2 Structure

  1. Introduction
  2. Main part
  3. Conclusion

2.3 Format

No

Yes

Maybe

2.6 Style

2.7 Delivery

Imagine

Here it is up to you: who is your audience?

2.10 Content

2.10.1 Cover

2.11.1 Introduction

2.12.1 Main part

2.13.1 Conclusion

2.14.1 Answer these questions

2.15.1 Make these thoughts happen:

After the first few sentences:

Interesting! Tell me more!

During the talk:

Makes sense, but I could think of some questions.

Nice graph! Sums up the whole thing.

After the talk:

Now I know what he/ she is doing. I have some questions about details that he/ she left out.

I would like to work on this myself!

Sing us a song!

3 Your bachelor thesis

3.1 Useful resources

3.2 General structure

3.3.1 Example structure of main part

  1. Theory 1
    1. Definitions
    2. Thesis
  2. Theory 2
    1. Definitions
    2. Thesis
  3. Practical part
    • Software architecture
  4. Evaluation
    1. Experimental setup
    2. Methodology
    3. Results
    4. Diskussion

3.4 Evaluation of your thesis

What your supervisor will look out for.

3.5.1 Prerequisites

3.6.1 Content

3.7.1 Formal aspects

3.8.1 Scientific profit

4 Citations and references

4.1 What is plagiarism?

4.2.1 Two simple rules

  1. When presenting an idea, do not leave it to the imagination if that idea is your own!
  2. Make your claims traceable!

4.3 Purpose of good citations

4.4 Format

4.5.1 Citing websites

No clear way.

@MISC{Wiki06,
  AUTHOR = "Joe the plumber",
  TITLE = {BibTeX},
  MONTH = {May},
  YEAR = {2006},
  NOTE = {accessed April 14th, 2014}
  HOWPUBLISHED = {\url{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibtex}}
}

4.6 Style

Use names + reference number:

Experiments by Foo [11] suggest that ...

You may also tuck them into parentheses:

This problem has been adressed by several authors (Foo [1], Bar [2]).

Use "et al." instead of long lists of names in references:

Foo et al. [2] showed that ...

4.9 Checklist for including a reference

4.10 Heuristics: should it be cited?

4.11 Indirect sources

If the original source of an idea is inaccessible, say so!

According to [1], as quoted by [2], ...

4.12 Originality of sources

Make sure a source is indeed the source of the idea!

4.13 Quotations

... are just copied text and generally bad style.

Foo claims that "bar is quux"

4.14 Honesty

5 Writing style

5.1 Guidelines

Avoid

Do not obscure by

5.4 In short

Strive for

5.5 Heuristics

5.6 For your convenience

Early draft reviews

  1. Send me your draft (or selected chapters)
  2. Receive personal feedback on content, style and format

6 Tools and templates

6.1 Word processors

Please try to refrain from

6.2 LaTex examples

6.3.1 Lists

\begin{itemize}
  \item foo
  \item bar
  \item biz
\end{itemize}

6.4.1 Images

\begin{figure}[h!]
  \caption{foo}
  \centering
    \includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{foo}
\end{figure}

6.5.1 Tables

\begin{table}[htbp]
\caption{Foobar}
\resizebox{1.0\textwidth}{!}{
\begin{tabular}{|c||c|c|c|c|}
\hline
\textbf{1} & foo & bar & biz & X \\
\hline
\textbf{2} & foo & bar & biz & X \\
\hline
\end{tabular}}
\label{table:Qux}
\end{table}

Please...

6.8 Use Pandoc

6.9 Pandoc template for bachelor theses

Download

https://gitlab.cis.uni-muenchen.de/David/stub-template-bathesis

Or clone

git clone git@gitlab.cis.uni-muenchen.de:David/stub-template-bathesis.git

Your account at CIP is (almost) setup and ready to go:

ssh [USER]@remote.cip.ifi.lmu.de
cd [PROJECT DIR]
git clone git@gitlab.cis.uni-muenchen.de:David/stub-template-bathesis.git

6.11 Pandoc examples

6.12.1 Lists

- foo
- bar
    - biz
    - qux

1. one
2. two
3. three

6.13.1 Images

![foo](img/foo.png)

6.14.1 Tables

-------------------------------------------------------------
 Centered   Default           Right Left
  Header    Aligned         Aligned Aligned
----------- ------- --------------- -------------------------
   First    row                12.0 Example of a row that
                                    spans multiple lines.

  Second    row                 5.0 Here's another one. Note
                                    the blank line between
                                    rows.
-------------------------------------------------------------

Table: Here's the caption. It, too, may span
multiple lines.

6.15 Possible workflows

"What I see is not what I get"

  1. Write draft in Word/LibreOffice/...
    • Do not waste time on format details.
  2. Copy raw text into template files.
  3. Finetune.
  4. Compile.

"Play it hard"

  1. Write draft in LaTex.
  2. Copy LaTex code into template files.
  3. Compile.

"Life is good"

  1. Write in Pandoc.
  2. Compile.

6.18 Use version control

Private repository at CIP

https://gitlab.cip.ifi.lmu.de

(create a Gitlab account at https://tools.rz.ifi.lmu.de/cipconf/index.rb?op=gitlab)

Group-public repository at CIS

https://gitlab.cis.uni-muenchen.de

7 Have fun!