No one will ever read my thesis because I wrote it to fulfill a bunch of requirements set up by my program and my advisors. I didn't actually write it for the average person to read - it probably isn't even all that readable by most standards. But it flew through the approval process, which was my intention.
After two years in grad school, I was looking to finish, and not to win an award. I could imagine that PhD students are even more desperate after 4-6 years in school.
Basically he is talking about the trench war one has in scientific writing. Call one side side A, and the others side B, and imagine there is a student who tried to read a thesis and did not get it. Side A will say: "Well, he is too stupid to unterstand my thesis", while Side B will say: "well, he might not know enough basics to understand your thesis, but I rather think that you just wrote incomprehensible gibberish".
I second his part about the informal parts very, very much, even though I would call this 'informal part' examples and motivations. Tell us in simple examples what your definition means, what your algorithm does, how your consideration works in this simple example, even if the example might be borderline with wrongness and oversimplification. It helps a lot, even though it is hard to find good examples :)
This was what I wrote in my post-PhD failure write-up:
"It is important to understand, from the outset of the PhD, who your target audience is: it’s you. I remember hearing that, on average, 1.6 people will read your PhD thesis. I’m pretty sure that includes yourself, your spouse, your supervisor, your second supervisor and your examiner (yeah, that’s technically 5 people. If someone says they’ve read your thesis, they’re probably lying -- they read page 9). You have to accept, that no one in the world will want to wade through this document. Ever."
Oh man, that rang true! (I just read the whole post). I did manage to finish mine a few years ago, largely running on fumes and requiring a re-write largely from scratch after the initial examination with a near-nervous-breakdown during each write-up... but other than that I think every point resonated.
I accept the fact that not many people will read my thesis.
Scientists in the field will not read it because they are not interested in all of the details of the analysis. They are only interested in the result, which will be published in a four page paper that only broadly explains the methods of the analysis.
My mother will not read it because I won't be writing it for her. When she asks me what I did, I will explain it in a way that she can understand. If I'm lucky, some science journalist will write an article about it, and I can send her the link.
There are multiple audiences:
1) peer scholars familiar in your area of research trying to determine if you really did and understood what you said you did and understood
2) someone who is not a scholar and wants to learn about your topic
Write a separate paper for #2. Use contractions and exclamation points. Present related work in a framework that tells a good story instead of that catalogs the space. Skip correctness details and drill in on implementation specifics.
Something for both audiences will just be too long and boring for either.
Every professor I have actually talked to about what constitute a thesis has professed the staple method: you take your best research papers and staple them together. This is an exaggeration, of course, because the document actually has to flow, but I have the definite impression that you can get a Ph.D. in computer security with multiple at least somewhat discrete projects.
Each academic paper, thesis, dissertation etc. should be written in two parts: One formal and one informal.
This should serve as a reminder to all researchers and writers; write a good abstract
Abstracts not only help the informal reader understand the concept. They introduce the reader to the broad stroke of the research and greatly assist information workers in their discovery.
Once I was writing a simulator for a reversible CPU, and the best documentation available was the man's PhD and Master's dissertations. When I told my instructor about it, he said "geez, I hope nobody ever has to read my thesis" which I thought was sort of an odd concept.
I can think of about 10-15 people worldwide who might be interested in my thesis, and since 3 of them are going to be examiners and all of them know each other it seems like a pretty quick way to disseminate the information. Well, except for the writing time... :)
No one will ever read your thesis... if it sucks. I have read many, many theses. In fact, I prefer to read theses than conference papers, because a thesis does not have as many editorial constraints.
This kind of generalization is dumb. "No one will read your thesis". Is that a law of nature? Does that apply to Claude Shannon? His M.Sc. showed how to map Boolean logic to electric circuits. I mean, who would ever want to read such a thing, right? ;-)
OK, enough of the title. I am all for making research work available and accessible, just as long as the quality of the work is not sacrificed. Research will always be difficult. It can't be made easy by adopting a new writing style, but it can be made easier.
I think the author is correct in the result, but not in the reasoning. The vast majority of M.Sci thesis are not read because they are neither ground-breaking nor well written.
As for ground-breaking, they are only one year projects on average. No one can expect much more from it.
The author's main critique is the style of the thesis, but here I think he is incorrect. Research papers need to be concise and precise, and to do that they must use an agreed upon language and style. The proper place for a casual style is in a survey or popular article (re: advertisement).
I think another reason that one shouldn't expect their thesis to be read is that a M.Sc thesis is usually the first full publication of the author, while even a PhD thesis is too often the collation of the author's first publications. One simply does't have the practice necessary to write a great paper.
Also, it is good to remember that the audience of a thesis the review committee. It is not written as a dialog in the research community as a journal article or conference paper is. Most advisors will not push for style changes or expanded references because at that would engage a larger review.
Sorry shard... didn't mean to strike a chord... it was a poor choice of title.
I am merely saying that we should bring the best parts of fiction and storytelling to academic writing as I believe more people would be read it and gain inspiration / insight from it.
I am actually commenting on TriinT's comment, not on your title. I'm not very agitated by hyperbole in blog titles. I also agree with your proposal that academic writing have informal sections which explain things in a manner that's not obfuscated for those not in the field.
I was criticizing the title, not the post. It's hard to name blog posts, but some names are more inflamatory than others. I was not attacking the thesis.
I think you are an exceptional person if you are reading more than 1 thesis.
Didn't mean to offend with the title, but I was hoping to elicit that kind of reaction. I have had this talk with a bunch of people at the University of Toronto and we all sort of agree.. but I am an extremist I guess.
If you are interested in Context Awareness and HCI then I will send you a copy when I am done ;)
Your have an interesting anecdote but it is just that -- a special case. You might as well say that prayer works.
Given the ratio of ground breaking theses compared to all the rest that are it is safe to say that no one will read a given thesis. At least, the chances are effectively 0. The sad part is that even if it is a good thesis it still won't ever see the light of day.
I've said it before, and I will say it again: I regularly read theses. Maybe I am insane, but I find them rather enticing when they're really, really good. OK, only one thesis every 100 years can be as monumental as Shannon's thesis, but that does not mean other all thesis suck. I often find myself reading theses by former MIT and Caltech grad students. I like Math, CS and Engineering theses. Needless to say, I don't read bullshit theses on women's studies or other pseudo-intellectual junk.
Conference papers are limited to 6 pages or so. Authors need to cite the right papers to ensure they won't offend anyone. They need to revise prior work. They need to stick to the core of the idea and refer to 1000s of other papers. Theses have less editorial and political constraints, so they're much more enjoyable to read IMHO. And, fortunately, theses don't have that hideous double column format.
If I want to learn a new field, I don't read papers. I read theses.
After two years in grad school, I was looking to finish, and not to win an award. I could imagine that PhD students are even more desperate after 4-6 years in school.