Richard de Neufville's TPP SM Thesis Manual - Title Page - MIT

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LiteratureFirst, draw up a bibliography of the most significant material in your area. Thisshould be in standard form: Last name of author, first name, (year), title of piece,publisher or journal, place of publication if book, otherwise volume numberpages.Then write a two-page report indicating why and how these references representboth the major schools of thought in your area, and the most significantcontributors on your topic.Thesis and Report Preparation - Richard de Neufville 52
Data CollectionPrepare a two-page report indicating and justifying:• The evidence you intend to collect to support your thesis;• Where your data may be found and how you plan to collect them;• The amount of your time, the cost, and the delays required to obtain the data;• How you will insure the reliability, validity, representativeness and significanceof the data; and• What you will do to maximize the efficiency with which you collect the data.Construction of ArgumentStep by step, describe:• The point you are trying to make. Use 1 or 2 sentences at most. Describingyour point so briefly is, in fact, much more difficult than using fifteen or thirtysentences to talk generally about the subject. This is part of the point of theexercise, to get you to think hard about what you are really trying to say.• What there is to demonstrate: You need to specify the distance between thepoint your thesis is trying to make and what is currently accepted by youraudience. For example, if you are writing about privatization to economistsyou would not have to demonstrate microeconomics. If however, youraudience consists of members of a public interest group, you might need todemonstrate why economics is relevant to their priorities.• The logic you will use to show that your thesis is plausible, that is, consistentwith findings of your research (or with other evidence).• The alternative explanations for this evidence, for example, as generated byalternative political or professional perspectives.• Why alternative explanations of your findings will be less satisfactory thanyours.Generally speaking, the parts of your thesis that do not relate to these 5 issuesare extraneous on the principle that "Less is more," that is that less clutter, theclearer the message, the extraneous parts should be dropped from your thesis.Thesis and Report Preparation - Richard de Neufville 53
Page 1 and 2: The following pages were supplied b
Page 3 and 4: Experience validates the usefulness
Page 5 and 6: superficial attributes of a thesis
Page 7 and 8: Judging by what many student resear
Page 9 and 10: Ask yourself first of all: What are
Page 11 and 12: Exhibit 1.1: Basic Checklist for Fo
Page 13 and 14: Titles that do not describe the sub
Page 15: the ‘critical’ technologies. In
Page 19 and 20: Research is Also IterativeReaders m
Page 21 and 22: your effort, you can then determine
Page 23 and 24: 4. LITERATURE SEARCH AND BIBLIOGRAP
Page 26 and 27: A most important remark for anyone
Page 28 and 29: Exhibit 4.1: Ways to Refer to Mater
Page 30 and 31: If the citation has not been publis
Page 32 and 33: instruments, or between observers,
Page 34 and 35: departure lounge. Such a sample wou
Page 36 and 37: • A heterogeneous population (alm
Page 38 and 39: new algorithm or procedure by const
Page 40 and 41: Use of a case study as part of an i
Page 42 and 43: have contacts in a specific situati
Page 44 and 45: Making the PointTo make your point
Page 46 and 47: 8. DESIGN OF ILLUSTRATIONSAn illust
Page 48 and 49: Exhibit 8.1: The Table to be revise
Page 50 and 51: the point no longer concerns the

Richard de Neufville's TPP SM Thesis Manual - Title Page - MIT

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