Dissertations - Uni

update....9845 words completed. Will be running the rule over it tomorrow, adding a few more words to the word count and generally checking it over before getting it bound on monday.
 
Deadline is 27th April, 10k words, So far I have not written anything. I haven't done much reading specifically for my dissertation but I know the subject pretty well, I am going to have to work fairly hard to get it done in time. I always leave these things to the last minute, I am good at producing extensive pieces of work in a short time though, I guess I have to be the way I do things :p

If it is of any interest, mine is a politics dissertation on National Socialism, the Nazi ideology for those of you that aren't familiar with it.
 
380 words done out of a potential 10k :eek:. However I am pretty confident that I have a lot of information, and its just the literature hunting that has been slow as I introduce a particular section of my report. Once I start discussing my own work the words should really mount up. I then have to repeat the process for 3-4 other things I studied. I'll probably then finish with the introduction for the whole report, and the theory behind what I'm studying.
Working starts in earnest tomorrow. ;)
 
*bump*

Hows everyone going? I hit 11k today (our aim was 10k), but i've still got two major-ish sections to go. I'm writing about digital cinema and have the sections 'security' and 'delivery' to write about - as you can guess it would be a bit odd to just leave them out completely! :(

Still need to do simple stuff like introduction, abstract and conclusions too. All this is surely gonna be more like 14k words lol :(

I'm really losing concentration though. It's in on the 26th and i wanted it nicely out of the way this weekend so i can work on other stuff, but have struggled to get anything really done in the past two days! :(
 
I finished my draft (needs supervisor to check it and suggest changes). I'm pretty confident though, its a monster :-). 12,000 words + some appendices. Its not really the length, some of the stuff is very technical / lots of very complicated maths stuff.
 
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I'm on 3k out of 10k so far, due in the 27th ...im not too worried though, I can write a lot in a short space of time. I've got the sources, been reading etc, actually writing it is the short bit :p
 
Mine's due May 5th, got three examinations before then (2nd/3rd/4th).

Done 8,000 words, it can be anywhere between 8,000 and 10,000, I've finished all the sections bar my conclusions and beefing it up a bit more with references.

Mine was on the Equivalent effect budgetary deficits and taxation has on an economy (aka the Ricardian Equivalence). It ended with a massive discussion on Econometric techniques.

Already got 40% of my mark though (20% draft chapter and research outline, the other 20% a presentation... 70% and 75% respectively for those).

I've worked consistently throughout the year though so it makes typing it up a lot easier and clamer than it should be, having six examinations in the first half of May doesn't help either.
 
Lagz said:
I finished my draft (needs supervisor to check it and suggest changes). I'm pretty confident though, its a monster :-). 12,000 words + some appendices. Its not really the length, some of the stuff is very technical / lots of very complicated maths stuff.

Yeah i had a draft back when i was on 9.5k and my tutor loved it. After that i kinda feel like i'm nearing the end which is probably why i cant concentrate on these last bits :\ I'm confident from my tutor's comments - but dont want to mess it up by rushing the end!
 
just hit 22k with mine :S (upper limit guide of 20k but its at the tutors discretion) as long as i make sure none of its waffle the word count doesnt seem to matter too much.

Including appendices, intro, abstract, background i reckon its gnna be around 27k words (at a guess) and around 150 pages once laid out correctly.

I dont understand why a computing degree at my uni warrants such a larger report than the seemingly more normal 10k! (Although saying that i also dont understand how people do their dissertations in 10k words or less.)

Gotta be in on the 25th for me :) getting family members to read over it all at the start of next week, then revisions, then get two copies bound and handed in next monday :) Once exams etc are out of the way oh BOY am i getting drunk :D
 
I'm nearing 10,000 words and I've still got the introduction, half of the results section and the project conclusion/evaluation to write. Writing that little lot should take me comfortably up to the 15,000 recommended word limit :)

It's generating all the complicated diagrams that's slowing me down. Thankfully I'm using LaTeX to write it all up in though so all the formulae and algorithms are quick and easy to format. LaTeX takes care of making it look all pretty as well :)

I'm aiming to get a first draft completed by the end of the week leaving me the final 2 weeks of the Easter break to tweak it based on my supervisors comments.
 
manic_man said:
I dont understand why a computing degree at my uni warrants such a larger report than the seemingly more normal 10k! (Although saying that i also dont understand how people do their dissertations in 10k words or less.)

I guess it depends on what they are looking for. For us they dont want much at all to do with the actual code. Maybe half a page for requirements, a page of good software engineering practices, then theory theory theory theory results and a page conclusion. In other words they dont care about the **** that anyone can put in if they have the time. When you write it from that point of view its quite hard to go much over 12,000.
 
Lagz said:
I guess it depends on what they are looking for. For us they dont want much at all to do with the actual code. Maybe half a page for requirements, a page of good software engineering practices, then theory theory theory theory results and a page conclusion. In other words they dont care about the **** that anyone can put in if they have the time. When you write it from that point of view its quite hard to go much over 12,000.
Same here. They don't even want to see source code in the appendix. It's all about the theory and results!
 
Mine (for a computing degree, so i've done a program also) is about 7.5k so far, and roughly 70pages, 30pages are the appendix though, and i have quite a bit to go. The aim is 10k, and it'll probably end up at around 100pages. It's such fun :D
 
Lagz said:
I guess it depends on what they are looking for. For us they dont want much at all to do with the actual code. Maybe half a page for requirements, a page of good software engineering practices, then theory theory theory theory results and a page conclusion. In other words they dont care about the **** that anyone can put in if they have the time. When you write it from that point of view its quite hard to go much over 12,000.

Yeah i see.

About half of mine is research (around 12k workds) and then we had to justify and choose a structured design process. I went with the Rational Unified process utilising UML. it basically means ive had to document design, implemntation, testing etc 4 times! (its an iterative design process) a lot of diagrams etc as well oc...

Your right, i spose it depends what the uni wants.
 
manic_man said:
(Although saying that i also dont understand how people do their dissertations in 10k words or less.)

Easy, I hate writing the damn thing. I did not start a degree because I wanted to do it for the love of studying the subject, I'm only doing it because I want a graduate level education to my name. I really don't like academic study as a rule. Although I am really interested in my subject area, I don't care for all the essay and dissertation nonsense, to be perfectly honest I prefer exams. I'm more practical than academic I guess.

Edit: Actually this isn't stirctly true at all, writing a dissertation is far preferable to many jobs, it's interesting ...and I am sure I'll be proud of it once I've completed it, but by god I wish it'd just go away right now :p
 
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Good luck everyone :)

Man this brings back memories. I had 10k which had to be done by xmas and then a 30k final dissertation (BSc Computer Science) which was due the 28th of April. At about now my lecturer also made a large change in his requirements, he wanted my code to be fully cross platform with a GUI interface, oh and could I expand my learning algorithm to cope with connect four :eek:

Sweet mother of bob, I didn't sleep properly until the day it was handed in, 4hrs a night sleep a night, doped up on caffeine :eek: I managed to pull it off in the end and I am now really proud of what I got done :cool:

The only thing I will say is that I really miss the challenges of uni (yeah and the parties)... for example really being made to think through a problem and find the best solution.
 
I have just this minute finished the main functionality of my application. I have one minor bit I'll add after writing the report if I have time, but it's not critical by any stretch of the imagination.

As for the report it's at about 6.5k words and has been for some time. The limit is 10k and the deadline is the 26th of this month.

I basically now need to write up the implemention, testing and conclusion, reword a bit from my earlier design work etc and I'm done.

Looks like it's all going to plan :)
 
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