Honours project information

Each Honours student in the School must undertake an Honours Project as part of their Honours year. This involves:

Independent study under the supervision of a member of staff.
The writing of a thesis giving an account of what was studied.
The presentation of some of this material in a 15-50 minute seminar which will be attended by staff and other students.

The objectives of the project are:

To give the student an opportunity to engage in some study which is driven more by their curiosity than by a given syllabus.
To expose the student to mathematics beyond the standard syllabus and to get some view of what is happening at the research front.
To help develop some of the basic research skills including use of the library and computer databases.
To develop the skill of writing technical material well.
To develop the skill of presenting technical material orally.

Many of these skills will be of great benefit whether or not the student progresses to further study in mathematics. Of course, for the student who does go on to do mathematical research, these skills are vital. It should be noted that although the project is an important part of a student's research training, the aim of the project is not to produce original new theorems. Occasionally a project will contain some original results, but this is certainly not a required component.

Remember that different projects can have quite different natures. Some are surveys of a particular area of mathematics, some look at the history behind a famous problem, others may require calculating some examples, or filling in gaps in published works.

Students will write an Honours thesis on their research topic, which counts for the majority of the Honours Project mark. This provides some preparation for the problem-solving and report-writing aspects of future employment, or for progression to a research degree.

The thesis will be assessed for quality in four major areas (see below), each of which is important.

Exposition: Clarity of the presentation. Sufficient introductory and summary material. Organisation and style of the presentation.
Literature coverage: Adequate coverage of related material in the field. Placing the topic in a wider context.
Critical analysis and insight: Understanding of the problem and/or model. Quality of the discussion. Discussion of the advantages and limitations of the problem/method.
Originality: E.g. by modifying or extending earlier theory or methods, or by developing new examples, or by an application to a new area. Are there new results, insights, methods orapplications?

The weighting of the various assessment components will vary depending on the type of project. For example, the literature coverage will be more important in a survey type project than in one which contains original results. All projects are expected to address all four areas mentioned above.
A viva voce (Latin for "by live voice", sometimes called "defence") is an oral examination where students answer questions about their research project in front of a panel (most likely assessors, supervisor(s), departmental coordinators). To idea is to access whether students:

Understand their research deeply.
Can think critically about their own work.
Can respond thoughtfully to academic questions.
Recognise limitations.

The viva voce will occur in the students' final term after the submission of their research thesis, last 15-30 minutes, and count towards the project mark.
In the final term of their Honours year, each students will present a project seminar of 15-30 minutes on their research topic to members of the staff, interested visitors and other students. The presentation will count for a small portion of the Honours project mark, and will be accessed on: knowledge displayed; motivation presented for the study of the topic; description of contributions/ achievements; description of results; clarity of verbal discussion; clarity of slides/figures; keeping to time; and responses to questions.
You should begin to plan the 'shape' of the thesis before the start of your third term. You supervisor should have a fairly mature draft by the end of Week 7 of your last term, but you should probably give them a chapter sooner than this so they can check your writing style.

The following is a general guide to how work on your thesis should progress. If you think that a major variation is warranted, please discuss this with either your supervisor or the Honours Coordinator.

Select supervisor and topic - before the start of your Honours year
Research, reading, discussion, understanding - mainly first term
Outline of thesis & significant piece of writing - by the beginning of your last term
Give a substantial draft to supervisor - end of Week 7 of your last term
Talk - last two teaching weeks of your last term
Final submission - the Friday of the last teaching week (week 10) in the final term of honours candidature.
Students are responsible for the production of their theses. Almost all students type their project using LaTeX.

Getting a good looking project can be helped by having a good style or 'document class' file and a decent example to copy. A style file and an example project are provided below.

Your project should be in 12pt font, singly spaced (or one-and-a-half spaced). Typically, a project should be between 40 and 60 pages in length. If you think that you have a good reason to write a shorter or longer project, discuss this with your supervisor. Projects are not judged by their weight! It is better to write a shorter project in which you understand everything than a longer one where you are rather hazy on the details.

The following files can help you to get your project writing started. (You will only need one of the UNSW crest files, depending on whether you are using the pdflatex or latex command to compile your project.)

unsw-crest.eps - the UNSW crest as an eps file, for use with latex.
unsw-crest.jpg - the UNSW crest as a jpg file, for use with pdflatex.
shell-honours.tex - a skeleton LaTeX file to help you get started.
unswthesis.cls - the UNSW thesis style file, adapted for the School.

Please also see Guidelines for writing a thesis for important information on writing your project and choosing a supervisor.
Students in their final term should submit via Moodle a PDF file of the final version of their project by the posted due dater. For more details on how the project should be presented see the previous section.

A late penalty of 5% of the maximum mark for the project will be applied per day or part day that the project is late. Where "late" in this context means after any extensions granted for Special Consideration or Equitable Learning Provisions. For example, a project that was awarded 75% would be given 65% if it was 1-2 days late. Any thesis submitted after 5 days will not be accepted.

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