Title. The title should be succinct, focused and objective, giving, if possible, the scope of the thesis.
Abstract or Summary. Examiners will look here to find out whether it is new knowledge; and if so what.
Introduction. Remember that the introductory pages are important because they create the first, and perhaps lasting, impression on the examiner. Use flow diagrams, headings, sub-headings etc., to create and sustain interest.
Literature Review. This should be a critical synthesis of the state of the knowledge. Especially important are the areas needing further investigation: what has not been done, as well as what has been done, but for which there is a conflict in the literature. The examiner finds out how the candidate thinks from reading this section.
Experimental Chapters. The hypotheses must be framed carefully and experiments designed thoughtfully
to test it.
General Discussion or Conclusions. You may afford to be speculative here.
Examiners ask the following questions when reading a thesis:
Has the student read all the references?
What questions does this thesis raise?
What richness does it contain that can spawn other work?
What is the quality of flow of ideas?
Keep in mind that examiners read a thesis in instalments and display a natural benevolence, i.e., they do not set out to read a thesis with the aim of failing the student.
Read the whole thesis to pick up repetition.
Read your thesis for ideas and read it again for editing.
A common structure used for experimental chapters
Introduction/Aim - What did you do and why?
Materials and Methods - How did you do it?
Assumptions
Hypothesis
Methods
Materials
Observations/Results
What did you find?
Analysis of the results
Discussion - What do your results mean to you and why?
Comment on the results - what are they?
What meaning can you rest from them?
Are they in accord with accepted theory?
Do the results uphold your assumptions?
How do you treat unexpected or inconsistent results?
Can you account for them?
Do your results suggest that you need to revise your experiments or repeat them?
Do they indicate a revised hypothesis?
What are the limitations in your methodology?
How do your results fit in with the work of others in the field?
What additional work can you suggest?
Conclusions - What new knowledge have you extracted from your experiment?
A thesis must tell a story clearly and convincingly.
The structure impart logical continuity to the thesis in much the same way that links in a chain confer on it integrity and strength.
The hypothesis is all important. It is the foundation of your thesis.
Some different explanations:
The hypothesis defines the aim or objective of an experiment, that if some likely but unproven proposition were indeed true, we would expect to make certain observations or measurements.
A hypothesis is an imaginative preconception of what might be true in the form of a declaration with verifiable deductive consequences.
Hypotheses are the larval forms of theories.
‘In every useful experiment, there must be some point in view, some anticipation of a principle to be established or rejected’; such anticipations are hypotheses.
Key features:
Fits known facts (know the literature).
Is testable (done the experiments).
Example from engineering.
Engineers invent rather than discover, but they discover knowledge along the way.
ANN + hardware to sort good apples form bad.
what is good? what is bad? what is accuracy?
discover works well with green apples, but not red ones.
discovered new knowledge.
suggest revised hypothesis as a starting point for new research.
have demonstrated the hypothesis ‘It is possible to sort good green apples from bad green apples, with an accuracy of better than 90%, using ANNs and suitable hardware’.