The Student's Guide for Writing a Thesis

The other day I found myself thinking about this funny movie (based on a previous book) named The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Basicly, some aliens decided that unfortunately Earth needs to be destroyed for it lies on the path of a still-to-build inter-galactic highway. Fortunately for the story's "hero", he's neighbour and friend was actually an alien in disguise who decides to save to take him away from the planet before its demolition and so starts a crazy inter-galactic journey that eventually leads to the so needed guide.

Unfortunately for my readers, I still don't feel prepared to write about my 3rd degree contacts and inter-galactic journeys. Instead, I decided to write (once again) about what has filled my mind for the past few months: my master thesis. This odd combination therefore lead to The Student's Guide for Writing a Thesis.

First of all, it is important to state what is expected of the reader after careful study of this guide, so that he/she can track his/her progress and ability. The uneducated might expect that, after reading such a guide, one would be prepared to write a thesis. This is obviously plain wrong; more, it defies the very foundations of logic. There is no such thing as being prepared for writing a thesis. Instead, this document intends to nudge the reader away from all the mistakes committed by the author and/or of his knowledge, so as to leave room for other more interesting and novel mistakes. I repeat for the sake of emphasis: interesting and novel. This is what people expect from your thesis.

1. Do no expect to change the world. High expectations are a bitch, and they will kill all of your motivation (trust me, you will need it) if you let them. Truth is, most likely you are too dumb to do anything of real value. Even if you have that potential, chances are you will be too lazy to fullfil it. In the unlikely event of you actually being able to do something valuable and interesting, you won't have the creative writing skill necessary to write it down while complying with the dreaded theses templates. Finally, if with some divine assistance you do manage to accomplish all that, your thesis still will remain unread and left to rot in some god forgotten library. Your grandma might read it though, so you can aim to change her life instead.
2. Coldplay, Antony and the Johnsons and Katie Melua all have awesome songs, but they are not what you need in this time of your life. Stick with Dragonforce, Emerald Sword, Rise Against and the like.
3. In the acknowledgements section, do not thank your dog. Even though I am sure it is a remarkably clever animal, your narrow minded examiners will see it as a weak inspiration source. Similarly, do not thank God. Many before you have already done that, and you might be indicted with plagium.
4. Do not misspell your supervisor or examiner's name. Chances are they won't like it.
5. Do not start writing your thesis away head of the deadline. My athletics instructor used to say something like "when you cross the finishing line, you'll be feeling like crap anyway, so you might as well start running fast from the beginning and get it over with quickly". The reverse applies here. Your thesis will only be ready about thirty minutes before the delivery date, and it will be crap anyway. Might as well save yourseld some trouble and start writing it the week before.
6. When working in your thesis, if you have friends nearby, you are screwed. Half of them are in the same situation as you are, and will steal your precious energies with their constant whining about their dull theses. The other half will keep inviting you to all sorts of events (they're on vacations and/or unemployed and thus absolutely bored). A thorough study of which type of friends is more harmful has not yet been conducted (future work section!) but it has been proven beyond doubt that having them around will endanger your finishing your thesis.
7. When working in your thesis, if you don't have friend nearby, you are screwed. You will spend all your "working" time thinking about them and how great it would be to have them around.
8. When working in your thesis, you are srewed.
9. Sleeping is overrated. Statistics say that about 50% of any work with a fixed deadline is performed from its start until the day before, while the other half is accomplished in that last sleepless night. In the case of a master thesis, this means that one single sleepless night equals to months of proper sleep time. You do the math.
10. The "advisor" field in your thesis' template is wrong; it should read "sponsor" instead. Therefore, do not expect to get any actual advice. Instead, you should expect (and demand!) constant praise of your work to others, even if he has no clue whatsoever what the hell you are doing. Do you, for that matter?
11. Do not feel sad if, during your thesis' defense, no one even knows the title of your work. Recall that, until a couple of hours before, you didn't either. Moreover, half those people have more interesting lives than you, and so cannot waste their precious time with such garbage. The other half do not have a life at all, and so cannot risk getting one by mistake by reading potentially something interesting.
12. Words are better than numbers. Numbers can be proven wrong, while with words at most someone might disagree with them.
13. Do not reference any work which is actually better than yours. The worse a paper is, the more you should try to include it somehow. Writing something like "[3], while not at all related to this work, absolutely sucks" is perfectly acceptable and will help building an adequate frame for your wonderful thesis. 
14. After reading 12 (you are reading this carefully, right?) you should know that the "State Of The Art" section is not what it seems. First of all, what you are doing is sure as hell not an art. Still, even ignoring that important fact, you really do not want to speak about the actual state of the art. There are billions of people in the world, so chances are one of them already tackled your problem in a much more successful way. Instead, what you should seek are those dumb as a lamb (this should definately be an idiomatic expression) researchers who tried to do something similar. Start by taking a look at your one-year-ahead colleagues' work. You can also cite the Mayans or the Romans and cleverly forget to include the reference date. Cite ancient Greeks at your own account. Some of those bastards actually did know what they were doing.
15. In the "Motivation" section, what people expect to read is why in god's name would somehow think of doing all the silly things you tried to do. It is not concerned with your actual motivation, so you should avoid truthful statements like "I need the diploma in order to get a job" or "My girlfriend says she's tired of dating a simple graduate". Tricky one.
16. Your results do not suck. It might seem so, for the unkeen eye, but elaborate statistic will actually show that under the right circumstances they are actually quite brilliant. If you still cannot see that, changes are you suck at statistics as well. Get an engineer to help you. If you are a girl, that shouldn't hard to accomplish. Otherwise, perhaps you should consider being an engineer yourself.
17. Balmer's peak has yet to be proven empirically, and should not be trusted. Being plain drunk is fine though.
18. Although not formally proven, legend has it that reading blogs will not help you in your quest.

Filipe Baptista de Morais

Lisbon Night Run

Yesterday I went to the Lisbon Night Run (10 Km). Overall it was an interesting race, and I guess it reached its main goal of lighting up the city (they gave all runners this speleology lights ). For one, I was in really bad shape (tough weak) and thus just wanted to run it quite relaxed and without any concerns whatsoever with timings. And so I did, crossing the finishing line with the timer marking some (terrible) 49' 41''.

Still, there were some "details" which I did not like. First of all, the two support spots along the track (~3Km and ~7.5Km). Although this is obviously a matter of personal preference, I do fare much better with a single one around the 5-6th Km. Then, the promise of departing zones by previous time records was not met.Finally and most importantly, the kilometer marking were (surely!) wrong. No idea how they messed that up, but it is really enfuriating for a runner.

In order to spice a little bit this dull and short post, two short remarks are in orders. The first concerns the water bottles provided during these races. In short races like this one, I'd say the average runner only drinks about 10cl at each stop. The waste of water (and plastic, due to the casings) you see in every single one of these races is enormous. Clearly some shorted water bottles should exist, if for no other reason than for this purpose alone. In fact, there are so many of these events nowadays that this might be a niche market waiting for an innovative company to come and claim it.

Secondly, it is funny how we can numb the body (with localised pain-killers) in order to get a race done, but not the mind. Perhaps yet another (odd) consequence of the triumph of mind over body.


Filipe Baptista de Morais

Return

My last post was on the 23rd of September, which makes this one of the longest periods of literary drought since the very beginning of this blog, back in early 2009. Oddly enough, it was also probably one of the periods of my life in which I wrote more. Unfortunately, I did not find my master thesis to be interesting enough to publish in here.

Last Tuesday I went back to IST (my University) in order to fill some paper and wrap-up some formalities. I must say it was somewhat odd to return there after about three months of abstinence; after all I hadn't ever been away for much more than one month for the last five years. The construction work which were taking place at the secondary entrance for as long as I can remember were obviously over, in a classic mockery.

 Passing through ISR( Institute for Systems and Robotics ), my previous (research) workplace, was particularly odd. On my way up on the elevator I kept thinking whether or not to return my access card. I would get my deposit (5€) back, but it would mean losing something which already starts to feel like a pleasant souvenir.

"My" chair had someone else's coat over it. Still, my desk remained as clean and empty as the moment I left it, and as it never while I worked over there. I guess it probably doesn't miss me much.

Soon, I'll be returning to IST for my very last time as a student. In the meantime, hopefully I'll find the time to write from time to time.


Filipe Baptista de Morais

PS: in the end I forgot all about the key card, so I ended up not returning it without reaching any kind of conclusion. Guess it must mean something.

Passion, Fire My Heart

When I was younger I used to love playing this collectible card game called Magic, The Gathering. I could spend entire days going through my cards thinking about good combos to employ in my decks (never really felt like looking for them online) and I still have hundreds (thousands?) of those cards wandering around. The most amazing thing about that passion, besides the large sums of money I was willing to spend on it, was the ammount of mental energy I had available for it. I could name hundreds of those cards, as well as their effects and even picture their illustrations in my mind (I would draw them if I could survive the embarassment). Some of the cards also had somewhat random quotes taken from the series of books (which I have never read) and I also knew most of them by heart.

One of my favourite cards, which was in fact as common as they get, had this quote: Passion, fire my heart. Though seemingly taken from a cheesy romantic book, the phrase was actually a war cry. The card was called Crown Of Fury (really nasty thing in a Goblins deck by the way) and had absolutely nothing to do with love or women. The lesson, already stated repeatedly in this blog, goes as follows: whatever your goal is, be it chasing a woman or slaughtering a bunch of wood elves, you will do it best if you do it with passion.

It is also interesting to notice the association with fire. Fire is a reckless force of nature, blind and unrelenting in its path of destruction. Blind, but blinding as well in all its bright glowing might. So too can untamed passions blind and burn us. And if left to spread and burn strong at their will, they too have a tendency to die out fast. However, look at anyone who has ever really succeeded at anything and you will find the common denominator is the passion for what they do.

Unfortunately, passion is not really something we can create; there is no switch for turning that driving force on. As in Springsteen's song, you can't start a fire without a spark. We can, however, fuel or smother, just like an actual fire. Similarly to when lighting a fireplace, one can use that first tiny spark to light something much larger and more beautiful. This need to be available is also present in Bruce's song, for instance when he sings you can't start a fire worried about your little world falling apart.

The war cry thus seems most appropriate for times when our strength falters and our spirits grow weary. Instead of praying for luck or divine intervention, remember that willpower is mankind's most powerful motor, and that is all you need or should desire to attain your goals. Passion, fire my heart.


Filipe Baptista de Morais

Go After It

I would like to start this short post by linking this TED Talk, on the possible benefits of stress. While the studies backing the first claims do seem to lack some robustness, statistically speaking, the lecture itself is extremely interesting. Personally I've always felt like stress makes me grumpier and less social rather than more empathetic as suggested. Still, we're often wrong when trying to perceive our own behaviour, and I guess it is undeniable that stressful moments do indeeed push ourselves into opening ourselves and sharing our feeling with others as a ways to easen our burden. Physically speaking everyone knows it can work both ways: it can make us capable of the most astonishing physically prowesses as well as cripple us in the most ridiculous ways.

For me the best part of the speech, apart from the good looking speaker, is her final advise: "chasing meaning is better for your health than trying to avoid discomfort, (...) go after what it is that creates meaning in your life and then trust yourself to handle the stress that follows." Stress comes and goes, and so do regrets, while meaningful things will linger within us much longer. Even if it were not better for your health, in the end it would still be definately better for your life. If you have found what it is that creates meaning in your life, go after it.


Filipe Baptista de Morais

Distracções

Há algum tempo deparei-me com esta notícia, sob o título "Os cérebros mais eficazes são os das pessoas mais distraídas". Como (quase) sempre, a minha primeira reacção foi um misto de curiosidade com incompreensão; o que é a eficácia de um cérebro? E como se mede?

Infelizmente a notícia não se alongava muito sobre e isso e, eventualmente por distracção, também não fui procurar mais informações. Aparentemente é algo que está ligado à memória operacional. Isto são excelentes notícias dado que de facto sou uma pessoa extremamente distraída. No entanto confesso que, do pouco que li, não consegui entender a relação. De facto sempre achei, talvez por experiência própria, que as pessoas distraídas nos detalhes do quotidiano o são por provavelmente estarem a pensar em algo mais importante (no seu entendimento, claro).  Isto por sua vez levaria a que, ao debruçarem-se novamente sobre um problema, partissem mais à frente visto que teriam feito grande parte do trabalho algo inconscientemente, correndo assim o risco de serem consideradas mais inteligentes ou eficazes (ambos termos para os quais nunca vi uma definição convincente neste contexto). De facto muitos dos grandes cérebros da história da Humanidade têm fama de serem particularmente distraídos ou desligados. É certo que não se pode descontextualizar as coisas, e em épocas onde a participação masculina nas lides domésticas se reduzia a comentar o jantar suponho que fosse fácil uma pessoa alhear-se dos problemas do quotidiano. Ainda assim, é um padrão que parece aparecer demasiadas vezes para ser ignorado.

A verificar-se esta história da memória operacional, contudo, representaria todo uma nova perspectiva sobre a dualidade distracção-eficácia cerebral. Talvez um dia já aprofundar os pressupostos, métodos e conclusões desse estudo e volte a escrever sobre o assunto. Se não me distrair.


Filipe Baptista de Morais

The Black Swan

Some time ago I decided to read The Black Swan, by Nassim Taleb, after spotting several references in other books I enjoyed. Yesterday, when reading A Arte de Pensar com Clareza by Rolf Dobelli, I came across another respectful mention to Taleb and decided to finally put on paper my thoughts on the book.

The Black Swan describes and analyses the phenomena (named Black Swan* by the author) whereby single isolated and unpredictable events (so-called outliers) are sometimes more relevant and important than the remaining vast majority which obey some rule or appear to follow some logic. I will not try to summarise Taleb's marvellous book in a couple of pages, but rather try to describe the general picture and through it hopefully make the reader curious enough to go and read it for him(her)self.

The main idea of the book is that it is wiser to recognise our knowledge's limitations and act accordingly, then trying to use the best tools available to try and predict the unpredictable. Quoting one of the book's examples, you would not want to use a map of the Pyrenees when climbing to the Himalaias, even if that is the most similar to a map of the Himalaias available. This apparently small step, of recognising that we are using the wrong map and to throw it away, may be surprisingly hard. Near the end comes my favourite quote from the book: It is much more sound to take risks you can measure than to measure the risks you are taking.

For the ones more familiar with statistics and/or background in engineering or mathematics the book also offers some insight on normal and fractal distributions, highlighting the differences between both and the conditions under which one may expect to come across one or the other.

Finally, do not lose heart if, at the beginning of your reading, Taleb's writing seems arrogant and condescendent towards the reader. You will find his ideas are definitely worth the hassle.


Filipe Baptista de Morais

* The Black Swan (capital letters) is not the same as the black swan, which is often mentioned in philosofical debates and is basically a fallacy of inductive reasoning.