THESIS ABSTRACT

A good abstract is concise, readable, and quantitative. The length should be approximately one paragraph, two at the most, or approximately from 200 to 400, possibly 600 words.

Explain in one line why the thesis project is important and summarize the major results. The final sentences explain the major implications of your work. Modern scientific style prefers the active voice. Abstracts are often an exception, but only if the passive voice reduces the total number of letters and words.

Remember:
Dont repeat information that is in the title. Be explicit. Use numbers and quantifiable information where appropriate. Compose the abstract after you have read your thesis for the last time.

Consider answering these questions to direct the content of the abstract: 1. What did you do? 2. Why did you do it? Which basic question were you trying to answer? 3. How did you do it? State methods. 4. What did you learn? State major results. 5. Why does it matter, what is the significance of your work? Identify one significant implication. The best source of examples of abstracts is journal articles in your field. Read the abstract; then read the article. Not all abstracts are properly written, even in refereed journals, but the more abstracts you read, the easier it is to spot the better ones.

Example Abstract:
It is commonly held in current computer architecture literature that stack-based computers were entirely superseded by the combination of pipelined, integrated microprocessors and improved compilers. While correct, the literature omits a second, new generation of stack computers that emerged at the same time. In this thesis, I develop historical, qualitative, and quantitative distinctions between the first and second generations of stack computers. I present a rebuttal of the main arguments against stack computers and show that they are not applicable to those of the second generation. I also present an example of a small, modern stack computer and compare it to the MIPS architecture. The results show that second-generation stack computers have much better performance for deeply nested or recursive code, but are correspondingly worse for iterative code. The results also show that even though the stack computers zero-operand instruction format only moderately increases the code density, it significantly reduces instruction memory bandwidth. Eric LaForest, used with permission [153 words]