finished...??

Well, the thesis is now printed out and at the binders, ready to be picked up and submitted this Friday morning. At the back of my head, I know that this is not the last time I will work on it. I want to submit a paper based on the thesis to a Cognitive Computation journal special issue which has a deadline of 1st November, generate papers out of the thesis and return to it again at viva time. And it's not handed in, yet. An academic's work is never done?

But...

A little celebrating will be done on Friday!

For the moment, the thesis in its submitted form is available at

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6496211/AnnaJordanousThesis.pdf 

It's a large file (23.8Mb) so I'd like to put it up, chapter by chapter if possible, on academia.edu or similar, and probably link to it on this blog too. But that is to be done another time, let's at least allow myself a day or two off of it!

The loneliness of the long-distance writer... or misery loves company?

I will hand in my PhD thesis this September. It is official. I handed in a form today that says as much.

Right now, two months seems like both an incredibly long time to be refining a document and an incredibly short time to finish everything off satisfactorily. Having spent July intensively writing up my thesis work (then getting ill, then getting back to the intensive write-up), I'm starting to produce something that I feel really proud of, slightly sick of and which continually surprises me with where it takes me, even now that all the data is collected and collated.

What has really surprised me during this time is the little community of 'writer-uppers' and 'finishers' that has developed around me.

I'd expected that these few last months of PhD would be lonely, spent mostly in front of a computer screen. That has turned out to be half true: the computer screen and I have become extremely well acquainted.

But... there seems to be so many people around me who are in the same boat, aiming for that September deadline. Even those not doing PhDs seem to be getting into the act, with contracts finishing in September, new jobs starting then, gig calendars starting to look towards October, etc. If I'm stressing about a particular problem in the thesis, or going slightly numb from trying to turn a dry set of numbers into some fascinating facts, then I don't have far to look before I find someone who can emphathise, or someone for a tea break.

So despite the title of this blog post, the tail end of the PhD tale isn't turning out to be like the loneliness of the long distance runner, bravely struggling on alone in the face of all adversity and difficulty. In all honesty it hasn't been that miserable either - in fact on occasion it has even been... almost... enjoyable! (I may have to keep reminding myself of that sometimes in the near future though?)

So, enough procrastination - it's back to the dry sets of numbers then. 2 months and counting till hand-in and the start of the next challenge.

The perils of word counts in LaTeX

I'm currently writing up my thesis. I am writing it in LaTeX, which for the uninitiated means that rather than writing it in Word or similar, I write it in a text file and include lots of formatting commands around the thesis to say `this bit should be emphasised' or `this bit is a subsection', then LaTeX produces a pretty pdf file from my text file.

Like any self-respecting numbers girl, I like to keep a watch on how many words I have written that day, and in total. Although I don't have a word limit to adhere to, hitting a good word count for a day makes me feel like I've done good work, even if a lot of it gets cut later...

For a while now I've been dubious about the word counter I've been using: the inbuilt Statistics word counter in TeXShop, which works using detex | wc -w , or in plain English, it strips the thesis file of all the formatting commands and then counts the number of words left. According to this word counter, I have 61138 words, but I've noticed that this total tends to fluctuate: there have been days where I've written a lot and have ended up with less words than I started with.

Trying some alternatives out:

• texcount *.tex: 60239 in text + 1457 in headers + 2469 in captions = 64165
• ps2ascii thesis.pdf | wc -w: 83415 (but this includes the bibliography which is currently 7686 words and any appendices text) 
• copying and pasting the text into OpenOffice: 75222
• copying and pasting the text into Word: 74664
• copying and pasting the text into TextWrangler (a Mac text editor): 74093

So I've anything between 61000 and 83000 words. TeXShop's statistics is instant but inaccurate. Texcount takes about 30 seconds to process then a quick calculation has to be done. ps2ascii also takes a little while and doesn't separate the thesis text from the bibliography/appendices. Copying and pasting, sadly, looks the most accurate (though now I have no idea how many words I've actually got...)

What I mostly want is a tool that measures progress very quickly, for some motivation - so I'll probably stick with TeXShop's Statistics or use texcount, after all of that!

As my housemate says, however,

it doesn't really matter if its 60 or 80 or 100,000 words, just finish it!

Right then: enough procrastination, back to the writing...
---
PS Must mention the excellent LaTeX tutorials written by Andrew Roberts.

2nd International Conference on Computational Creativity (ICCC'11)

The call for papers is out for the 2nd international conference in computational creativity, to be held in Mexico in April 2011.

I'm planning to submit a paper containing my thesis work in a 'nutshell' (well, the work up to December 2010, when the submission deadline is).

Should be pretty good practice for summarising the key points of my thesis - plus if it gets accepted it will be a great way to promote what my thesis is going to be about, and get some feedback before submitting, with the people who are the target audience for my PhD. So far, people I've spoken to in this research community have been quite interested in what I'm doing, so hopefully there will be a good level of interest in my work at this conference.

The first step on a long road, paved with LaTeX tiles and with a gleaming thesis at the end

Today I wrote the first words of my thesis.

Well...

For a while now I've had a thesis plan and a collection of chapter headings and subheadings - but no content. Now today I've started filling in the content.

What I've written today is very much for a first draft, full of [*** NOTES AND REMINDERS ***] and other aesthetically pleasing annotations. I should imagine that at least half of what I've written gets moved around, edited, or discarded, as I get more used to thesis writing.

But...

The first steps have now been taken on this PhD writing-up journey. After an apprehensive start of not knowing what on earth I was going to write as the first words, I just wrote something. Anything. Then changed it. Lo and behold, I'd started writing up. It feels good!

Word frequencies: some fun

Having just written a paper on how the frequency of a word in a document can give us an idea of the semantics of that document, I thought it would be fun to run my paper through word cloud software, to summarise it by frequency... here is the result (courtesy of http://www.wordle.net)

Journals

Went to a fairly non-eventful research training session today, on scientific writing. Beyond this quite useful wikiversity link on how to write in a scientific way, the only real benefit I got from this (apart from a break from marking!) was to think about what journals I want to be aiming for, for publication.

As my research focus has shifted away from music and towards creativity and evaluation this year, many of the journals I have been used to looking at have become less relevant. So now I've set up some content alerts for some new journals and need to get used to looking at different journals (ideally I want to set aside some time for this each week to browse some journal content).

Here's a list of the journals that are quite relevant for me (along with some journals on music/AI that I prob will still find interesting but not necessarily useful for my current work):

• Creativity Research Journal (impact factor 0.57)
• Lecture notes in AI
• Lecture notes in CS (probably not so relevant anymore really)
  
• Leonardo (and related journals)
  
• Digital Creativity
  
• Cognitive Science (impact factor 2.179)
  
• Topics in Cognitive Science (impact factor 9.389)
  
• Cognitive Science: A multidisciplinary journal
  
• Minds and Machines
  
• Journal of Creative Behaviour (0.429) (we don't get it)
  
• Creativity
  
• Creative Review (not peer reviewed, doesn't look that relevant)
  
• Psychology of aesthetics, creativity and the arts
  
• Evaluation
  
• Evaluation review
  
• Research evaluation
  
  
• AISB quarterly (not really a journal..!)

Music-related journals:

• Journal of New Music Research
  
• Computer Music Journal
  
• Psychology of Music
  
• Music Perception
  
• Musicae Scientae
  
• Journal of interdisciplinary music studies
  
• Journal of music and meaning
• Contemporary music review
  

workshop - writing up your DPhil or PhD thesis

My officemate persuaded me to go to this workshop, as we are both starting to think about the reality of the looming PhD thesis write up. This was the experiences of a post-doc researcher, on her writing up stage of her doctoral research.
Well worth going to this, even though we are both in our second year - I think that is the ideal time to go to a workshop like this as there is enough time to plan and consider, with the luxury of time still. Here's a summary of what was mentioned in the workshop, along with extra thoughts I had during the workshop.

General observations / motivation

• Keep the end goal in mind
• Whole process of writing up can maybe take 3 or 4 months or more, but if you do little bits as you go then it gets easier, and you can break it down a bit.
• Enjoy the process of becoming an expert in your field!
• Track progress to keep motivated, remember the bigger picture. Zoe suggested keeping a chart of progress on your desk as a visual representation of progress.
  

Planning and Organising the write-up

• Always keep in mind the thread of your thesis, what story are you telling? Keep this prominent throughout.
• Keep on looking for gaps in the story and aim for continuity
• Keep records of what you do so you don't have to redo that work later
• A useful software for graphs might be CollidaGraph (for mac) or Prism (for PC) (although Matlab seems pretty ok for my stuff so far)
• Make a timetable, especially by working backwards from a deadline to make the time left seem more real. Factor in LOTS of extra time like printing time, admin, time for supervisors to give feedback, plus 'timeout' time in between reviews
• For my two supervisors, is it worth giving them a chapter at a time or the thesis all in one go - closer to the time, double check what they prefer
• Regular meetings with supervisors help to keep you on track, especially if you give them a piece of work each time and ask them to return the last piece of work at the same time?
• Examiners - who do I want (I have some ideas for external examiners, not a clue for internal examiners)

Writing

• Introduction chapter should be an introduction to this thesis, rather than a literature review, for example. Say what you're writing about, what's the story you're telling, your motivation for this study and summarise what's in the thesis.
• Latex/Bibtex looks to be likely to save a LOT of hassle with formatting etc, especially if I can find a template for Sussex DPhil theses, which someone said might exist... (I've just spent a bit of time sorting out papers I've saved on my computer, and sorting out/updating a references bibtex page for these - at the time it felt like procrastination but actually now I think I'll find papers a lot easier)
  
• Get started with whatever chapter seems easiest. Break everything down into chunks
• The thesis isn't a descriptive account of the last three years' work, its a coherent description of a fully mature research project
• Save each chapter separately with an annotation of date for that version and probably the filename its stored under as well - as a footer for each page, perhaps?
• Check university formatting rules (so that template for latex would be amazing, if it exists?)
• Before the first draft, make a VERY detailed chapter plan. Break it down into chunks that are clearly defined in scope. Max 3 levels of subheadings was recommended.
  
• Concentrate the initial effort on thesis structure rather than on the detail in the text of the first draft - as the text is likely to be revised considerably in later drafts. Just write a draft and get it onto paper
• Writing style: Keep It Simple Stupid! Be concise and don't talk a load of circular woffle. Don't try to sound clever... Active voice is often better than passive voice.
  
• For a bit of variety in the writing, vary the length of the sentences (particularly if this tends to be quite uniform).
  
• How can I use pictures/graphs/tables/other visuals most effectively? The whole 'picture paints a thousand words' thing comes into mind here...
• Pay attention to little details - it suggests the work being described has been approached in a similar vein
• Lengthwise - about 200 pages is a ballpark figure. Decent chunk of words (maybe 10,000) for the introduction, similar for the discussion (maybe 7000)
• Make sure each part fits together as a story, refer between sections as necessary (without making the reader flit back and forth constantly

Submission

• Worth talking to previous DPhil students about the process - not well documented
• At least 2 months before submission, hand an 'intention to submit' form in with an abstract (to allow the university to contact potential examiners and sort out any difficulties)
• Useful contact at Sussex House: Penny King
• Initially hand in 3 soft bound copies and make a further copy for yourself for the viva.
• Then if the viva is successful, after corrections, hard bound copies get done.