300 Words from Freedom

Published 18 December 06 11:42 AM | wayne.griffiths 
My task today (or however long it takes me) is to write my thesis abstract. I remember reading somewhere that it should be around 300 words. It _should_ be fairly easy, but my supervisor keeps saying it is the hardest part. Maybe it's difficult to cram everything in such a small amount of words. I'll be having a squiz at a few other examples from past theses so I can get an idea of what I should be aiming for. Once this is done, I will have in essence completed my first draft of the thesis in its entirety (hooray) and this is the goal that my supervisor and I set a few months ago. So once I can come up with these 300 words, I can pack up and go home :-)

Comments

# robyn.owens said on December 18, 2006 8:48 PM:

Well the reason it is called the "abstract", of course, is because it *is* abstract. It is the abstract version of your whole thesis. Not so long ago, the abstract was read out at graduation ceremonies, although we stopped that when abstracts started getting too long and completions became more numerous. But here are some hints: you should answer in your abstract the five questions every thesis should answer (see previous blog on theEzone); it should be a stand-alone document and not rely on the rest of the thesis to be understood; it should be written in simple language that can be easily translated into other languages and understood by those who do not have English as their first language; it should contain no abstract symbols and no reference pointers; and it must lay claim to new results. Have a great day!

# wayne.griffiths said on December 19, 2006 8:38 PM:

Thanks for your always helpful advice! I think I managed to fulfil most of those criteria, although it was about 330 words in the end. Anyway I'll be editing it further when I return to Aussie shores at Xmas (I have a few weeks before my supervisors return from holidays to edit some of the chapters) so it may end up slightly smaller. It just felt good to get a whole version finished.

Now for the hard part - cleaning out my office here in Sweden!

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About wayne.griffiths

I started at UWA in 1997, completing a Diploma in Modern Languages (Italian) in 1999. By 2001, I had completed a Bachelor of Computing and Mathematics degree with Honours. In 2002, I worked part-time in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. From 2003 to 2007, I studied for the qualification of PhD in Electrical Engineering at the Western Australian Telecommunications Research Institute (WATRI). My thesis title is "On A Posteriori Probability Decoding of Linear Block Codes over Discrete Channels", and it is currently under examination.