Robyn's Blog : Thesis

Discovery or Invention

robyn.owens — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 12:38:00 GMT

Jacques Hadamard, who lived from 1865 to 1963, was a French mathematician whose most important result was about the distribution of prime numbers - basically, the bigger the numbers, the more sparse are the primes (the number of prime numbers less than n grows as fast as n/log(n) ). However, he also wrote quite a famous piece on the way in which mathematicians' minds work in the process of uncovering mathematical results.

He says: "The distinction between (invention and discovery) is well known: discovery concerns a phenomenon, a law, a being which already existed, but had not been perceived. Columbus discovered America: it existed before him; on the contrary, Franklin invented the lightning rod: before him there had never been any lightning rod."

Hadamard says that artists' creations are generally inventions, whereas scientists work is mostly concerned with discoveries. Mathematicians are often caught between these two worlds: Hadamard's prime number result is a discovery. But is the square root of minus 1 a discovery or an invention?

Is the new knowledge you are uncovering in your thesis a discovery or an invention? Which sort of new knowledge best advances humankind?

UWA Library - dissertations and theses database upgrade

robyn.owens — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 01:27:00 GMT

The UWA Library has recently upgraded its subscription to ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database to allow access to documents in full text.

The ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database (PQDT) is a comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses, from all fields of study, from around the world. The full text version includes 2.4 million dissertation and theses citations from 1861 to present day with 1 million full text dissertations that are available to download in PDF format. Full text dissertations include most from 1997 with a strong retrospective collection for older works. Each year more than 60,000 new full text dissertations and theses are added to the database.

You can access this exciting resource from the Library website. Simply search for the title ProQuest Dissertations and Theses in the Library catalogue and link through to the online resource.

Best thesis in the country

robyn.owens — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 06:44:00 GMT

I'm on a judging panel at the moment to decide on the best computing thesis in Australia or New Zealand for 2007. So I have a box of theses to read, and no instructions on how to decide. Firstly, the good news is that this competition, like so many others that I find myself judging, is by nomination, and you'd be surprised how few people nominate for things like this. It's quite a prestigious award to have on your CV, so my first piece of advice is "apply for everything" like this. Read the instructions carefully, if there are any; take the entry seriously, because any work done for it can usually be re-packaged for something else, and then see how it works out.

But back to my task. Here's what I am looking for at the moment: a clear enunciation of the problem considered in the thesis; a clear statement of the solution or solutions found or constructed; what the implications of the thesis might be, both from what is stated in the thesis itself, and from any publications arising from the thesis. Since all these theses resulted in publications, I am also looking at the quality of the outlets (journal impact factors or the quality of the peer-reviewed conferences at which the work was presented), and whether there have been any citations (excluding self-citations). And since all these theses have resulted in publications that are co-authored, I'm also looking for a clear statement on what the candidate's contribution has been. After all that, I'm then getting a feel for the style of writing, the quality of the document in terms of publication standards, and a sense of the scholarship involved. I wonder, at the end of all this, whether my choice will coincide with that of the other judges?