The Honours year will be 48uoc. The compulsory thesis will be 18uoc. In addition to the thesis work each student will undertake 5 courses of 6uoc each. With permission of the HOS (or Honours coordinator) a student may be allowed to undertake a 6th course worth 6uoc. Only 5 courses will count towards the Honours mark, and the thesis will represent 18/48 of the mark. If 6 courses are taken, the 5 best will count.'

Honours students each present a seminar of 25-50 minutes on their thesis to members of the mathematics staff, interested visitors and other students. Students should also attend the thesis seminar and any appropriate seminars in their thesis area. This requirement enables students to become familiar with the range of current research in Mathematics and to see how to present a research seminar.

An honours student must undertake at least 24uoc within a single Department (Applied, Pure, or Statistics), where the thesis counts for 18uoc. The student will be assigned to the Department in which most units of credit (uoc) are completed. In the case of a student completing 24uoc in two Departments, the student will be assigned to the home Department of the thesis supervisor.

Course Timetabling: A timetabling meeting of (i) honours courses in Applied and Pure and (ii) training sessions for all Departments, will be held in room RC 4082 at 9am on the Friday of Week Zero in both Semesters 1 and 2. All honours students must attend
External Courses: With the permission of the relevant Honours Coordinator, a student may take courses from other disciplines at UNSW, other mathematics schools (for example, at University of Sydney), and external courses such as those taught at the AMSI Summer School.

Course Timetabling: A timetabling meeting of (i) honours courses in Applied and Pure and (ii) training sessions for all Departments will be held in RC4082 at 1pm on the Friday of week 0 in both Semesters 1 and 2. All honours students must attend.

Students will attend sessions organised by the Honours Coordinators in which they practise their final honours seminar presentation, listen to presentations of other honours students, and engage in other honours training activities. Students should also attend any appropriate seminars in their thesis area. This latter requirement enables students to become familiar with the range of current research in Mathematics or Statistics and to see how to present a research seminar.

Students will write an honours thesis on their honours topic. The thesis normally includes a literature survey and a critical analysis of the topic area. This should prepare you for the problem-solving and report-writing aspects of future employment, or for progression to a research degree. Each student works under the supervision of one or more members of the School on an investigation of some topic in Mathematics or Statistics that is currently an area of active research. Members of the School are flexible about the range of areas in which they will supervise students. Prospective students should start talking to staff members about possible thesis topics well before they start their Honours year. An early decision about a topic will facilitate an early start on reading. Supervision by individual staff members is dependent on staff agreement and availability.
The thesis will be assessed for quality in four major areas (see below), each of which is important. The mark for the thesis will be made up as follows: 90% based on the written thesis, and the remaining 10% will be determined by an oral presentation. The thesis will be assessed by three markers, one of which is the supervisor, and each marker will provide a written assessment and grade(s) based on the following:

Typically in weeks 11 or 12 of the last semester of their honours year, students each present a seminar of 25-50 minutes on their thesis to members of the mathematics staff, interested visitors and other students. This presentation is worth 10% of their thesis mark. The presentation will be assessed 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.

Sum of thesis grade (worth 37.5%) and 5 courses (worth 12.5% each), possibly scaled.

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.

The honours thesis is due at 5pm on the final day of week 12 in the final semester of honours candidature. The rule below (also on the honours webpage regarding loss of grade for days late) will be applied if the thesis is late with no good reason. In the case of illness or other extenuating circumstances, the late penalty will be determined by agreement between the three thesis assessors and the honours coordinator

Getting Started

Before you start your Honours year, you should speak to members of staff about possible thesis topics. Find out who works in the areas that you are interested in and who you find it easy to talk mathematics with. If at all possible, settle on a topic and supervisor before the start of your first Honours semester.

Most students see their supervisor about once a week, although this is usually open to negotiation between the student and the supervisor. Even if you haven't done much between visits it is a good idea to have a regular chat so that your supervisor can keep track of how you are going. You can expect your supervisor to:

Thesis Writing

Your thesis is a report of what you have been studying in your thesis. Write it as if you were trying to explain the area of mathematics that you have been looking at to a fellow Honours student.

P R Halmos (1970): How to write mathematics, Enseignement Math. (2) 16, 123-152 has the following advice: ``The basic problem in writing mathematics is the same as in writing biology, writing a novel, or writing directions for assembling a harpsichord: the problem is to communicate an idea. To do so, and to do it clearly:
• you must have something to say (ie, some ideas), and you must have someone to say it to (ie, an audience);
• you must organize what you want to say, and you must arrange it in the order you want it said in;
• you must write it, rewrite it, and re-rewrite it several times;
• and you must be willing to think hard about and work hard on mechanical details such as diction, notation, and punctuation.
That's all there is to it.”

1) Say something: To have something to say is by far the most important ingredient of good exposition---so much so that if the idea is important enough, the work has a hance to be immortal even if it is confusingly misorganized and awkwardly expressed..... To get by one this first principle alone is, however, only rarely possible and never desirable."

2) ``The second principle of good writing is to write for someone. When you decide to write something, ask yourself who it is that you want to reach." Your broad audience will be fellow Masters and Honours students, who may not be experts in your thesis topic. ``The author must anticipate and avoid the reader's difficulties. As he(/she) writes, he(/she) must keep trying to imagine what in the words being written may tend to mislead the reader, and what will set him(/her) right."

3) Organize: The main contribution that an expository writer can make is to organize and arrange the material so as to minimize the resistance and maximize the insight of the reader and keep him on the track with no unintended distractions.

4) Think about the alphabet: Once you have some kind of plan of organization, an outline, which may not be a fine one but is the best you can do, you are almost ready to start writing. The only other thing I would recommend that you do first is to invest an hour or two of thought in the alphabet; you'll find it saves many headaches later. The letters that are used to denote the concepts you'll discuss are worthy of thought and careful design. A good, consistent notation can be a tremendous help.

5) Write in spirals: The best way to start writing, perhaps the only way, is to write on the spiral plan. According to the spiral plan the chapters get written in the order 1,2,1,2,3,1,2,3,4 etc. You think you know how to write Chapter 1, but after you're done it and gone on to Chapter 2, you'll realize that you could have done a better job on Chapter 2 if you had done Chapter 1 differently. There is no help for it but to go back, do Chapter 1 differently, do a better job on Chapter 2, and then dive into Chapter 3. Chapter 3 will show up the weaknesses of Chapters 1 and 2.

6) Write good English: Good English style implies correct grammar, correct choice of words, correct punctuation, and, perhaps above all, common sense."

More articles on how to write mathematics:

These days, theses are almost always typed in LaTeX. If you are going to type the thesis yourself, you should allow a certain amount of time to become familiar with this software. Indeed starting to learn LaTeX well before you actually want to write the thesis is a very good idea.


You should not underestimate the time it takes to produce a polished document. You will almost certainly need several drafts. It is very difficult to concentrate on getting the mathematics, spelling, grammar, layout, etc, all correct at once. Try getting another student to proofread what you have written - from their different viewpoint they may pick up on lots of things that you can’t see.

You should begin to plan the `shape' of the thesis before the start of your second semester. You supervisor should have a fairly mature draft by the end of week 8 of your last semester, but you should probably give them a chapter rather sooner than this so they can check your writing style.

Typically a thesis should be between 40-60 pages in length. If you think that you have a good reason to write a shorter or longer thesis, discuss this with your supervisor. Theses are not judged by their weight! It is better to write a shorter thesis in which you understand everything than a longer one where you are rather hazy on the details.

Honours Thesis Format

This section provides some guidance as to the physical presentation of an Honours thesis at UNSW. To quote the rules:

These days, almost all students type their theses using LaTeX. The School runs periodic classes on how to get started in LaTeX and you should take advantage of these as early as you can.

Getting a good looking thesis can be helped by having a good style or `document class' file and a decent example to copy. Below are links to a UNSW thesis class which has been set up to produce a nice front page which says all the right sort of things and has a copy of the UNSW crest on it. There is also a cut down example of a past thesis.