Information for Student Projects

This page collects various useful information to get you started on your thesis or research project. Most of the theses I supervise are within the E project. E ist a theorem prover for (many-sorted) first-order logic with equality.

Open topics

• Fresh topics
  • A Benchmark and Test Environment for the Theorem Prover E
    This topic deals with an environment to automatically execute versions of the theorem prover E with defined configurations and test sets.
• You can find additional open research topics in this PDF document (in German language).
• Feel free to approach me with your own suggestions. However, I'm probably not the best supervisor for cell phone app development projects, and I'm almost certainly not the right supervisor for anything not running on open platforms (like Linux, Unix, BSD, ...) using Free Software tools.

On Writing

• I can read English and German well enough to understand and grade texts. Writing in English is fine, but please be careful about proof-reading. Do consider getting a style guide. I found The Elements of Style by Strunk & White to be helpful. Older versions out of copyright can be found on the web, but be aware that while the fundamentals are still good, some aspects of good writing have changed. The current edition is available for around EUR 10. I have a small number of copies to lend out.
• Some people find making Mind Maps useful. Note that the process is as important as the result - don't overthink it. If you do them quick and dirty, you can always throw them away and start over. Large paper sheets, flipcharts and white- or blackboards are great - don't obsess over tools.
• If you feel unsure about the structure of the thesis, try to adapt my generic outline for theses and papers:
  • Introduction/Problem statement
  • Background/Theory
  • Design
  • Implementation
  • Validation
  • Conclusion
  • Literature!
  Alternatively, Alan Bundy has some very good advice.
• Frequent mistakes by German writers:
  • "Shortly" means "in the near future". You might try "briefly".
  • "Im folgenden" can be rendered as "In the following", or sometimes "Below", but not "Following".
  • "Next" can be used in various contexts, but not to literally translate the German "Neben X gibt es Y" - use "Next to", oder "In addition to". In general, stock phrases cannot usually be translated word-for-word.
  • Most compound adjectives and adverbs need to be hyphenated in English. All red-blooded humans should use properly-hyphenated words!
  • English sometimes uses different forms for countable and uncountable objects. I use less sugar in my tea, but fewer cubes of sugar.
• If you submit a draft (or a final version) and want feedback, please name the file Name_YYMMDD.pdf, where Name is your name and YYMMDD is the date of submission (Year, Month, Day). You probably only write one thesis of any given type, but I supervise many, and I need to keep them sorted in my mind and on my disk.

Format

• The title page must contain certain pieces of information, including:
  • The title of the thesis
  • The name of the author(s)
  • The type of the thesis
  • The course of study (Studiengang)
  • "Duale Hochschule Baden Württemberg Stuttgart"
  • The due date ("Abgabedatum") and the work period (12 weeks for Bachelor theses, the official dates for a Studienarbeit)
  • Your matriculation number and course (e.g. TINF21C)
  • Your employer
  • The name and titles of the DHBW supervisor (e.g. Professor Dr. Stephan Schulz)
  • If applicable the name (and titles) of a company supervisor.
• A single-author thesis should have about 60 pages in length, not counting automatically generated content (e.g. "List of X"), and in a reasonable layout. If there are two authors, go for about 90 pages, and include a clear statement who wrote what (you can leave 20-30% shared content). I write about a page a day, so plan enough time for writing.

Literature

• You can only write if you read. Read the sources provided - if they are not (good) enough, go find some more. You don't need to read every book or paper in full, but you should have a reasonable mental map of your field of work, so that you can evaluate and place new ideas.
• If you work on a topic proposed by me, they will usually have a small number of sources attached them. More often then not I can provide you with an actual copy of the paper (often by pointing to my personal bibliography web page). If I mention a paper, it usually contains information you will need, and which probably will end up in your theses. These papers will also have a literature list at the end - use this as an entry point to find more literature.
• Google Scholar is a great resource for finding papers. For computer science it is very comprehensive (i.e. it also contains some grey literature and dubious sources). The number of citations also provides an indication about the impact and importance of a given paper. Google Scholar is, however, curated automatically, and contains a number of mistakes. Make sure to check the bibliographical data against an official source.
• The full text of papers may be available from the publisher, possibly via the DHBW library. Often, authors also publish their own papers on their web sites. If not (but check first!), many authors will send a copy if they receive a polite request.

Useful links

• The official E web site has information mostly for (potential) E users
• The E develoment web site has information mostly for scientists and developers. It also hosts the private E git repository. However, see next item...
• E is now (also) hosted on Github, and I recommend that you clone E from there. It has better tools and I don't need to fiddle with your public keys ;-).
  • E's project page
  • The E repository
• My BibTex blibliography file is a reasonably good start for your literature (don't read all the papers!)
• You can download all (or nearly all) of my papers (i.e. the papers where I am one of the co-authors) from my bibliography page.
• The Superposition@25 tutorial is a useful overview
• Google Scholar is a good place to find additional literature.