/thesis.main

Master's Thesis

MIT LicenseMIT

Thesis Project

Thesis project. More information is available here and here.

Plan of Attack

  • Create an initial Plan of Attack.
  • Place papers/articles/notes/etc. in the 00_Data folder.
  • Create an initial outline in the documentation using task.pdf.
  • Update structure of documentation so that it is ready for review.
  • Add links to the papers in MLA Style.
  • Get approval for structure.
  • Extend plan by breaking down the writing process into subtasks.
  • Write the literature review part. Include the "Evaluation" part of the papers discussed in the our paper.
  • Provide statistics about the final dataset.
  • Write about train/test split.
  • Describe the implementation part.
  • Refactor written text.
  • Write about the evaluations.
    • Explain the APIs (various problems there are when interacting with it).
    • What prompt was used.
    • Add baseline and analyze it.
    • Performance and Error analysis.
  • Finish the discussion.
  • Finish the conclusion.
  • Finish the introduction.
  • Address feedback.
  • Write extended abstract.
  • Create PowerPoint presentation.

Resources

  • How Do I Handle Insecurity about My Writing Ability?
    • Takeaways:
      1. De-emphasize the writing aspect of you putting together your dissertation. Stop using writing the only verb you use to describe you working on your dissertation.
      2. 80% of your efforts should go to thinking and experimenting. Figuring out what you want to say and make it worth saying. Do experiments, look at what you have discovered, come up with even better experiments, understand the literature, figuring out the thing you want to say is 80% of the work and where the value comes from. 20% is writing that down in a way that people can understand.
  • How Can I Use Time-Blocking To Help Write My Dissertation?
    • Takeaways:
      1. Schedule less. Don't be too ambitious with putting tasks on your to-do list during the period of dissertation writing.
      2. Be consistent but also be less ambitious on how much you're going to do each day.
      3. Try to ritualize this. Use the same times, probably first thing in the early morning, same place, same setting.