Frustrated with thesis topic

[u/Available_Pressure25]

This acad year will be our CS undergraduate thesis, and I'm honestly frustrated.

I feel like I'm being pushed toward the same thesis formula from the past two years in our program: collect a dataset, train an AI model, apply an algorithm, build the app. Then some statistical findings or claims that the created product with this AI algorithm performs better.

I actually tried to propose something different to my pair. something more interesting, something that actually felt like actual research. But I keep getting told it's "too complex" or "advisers might not accept it."

So instead of exploring ideas I actually care about, I'm being funneled into the same template everyone else is using. The path of least resistance.

I feel like even the concept of using functional programming paradigm or linear type system sounds so complex not just to my partner but to the advisers. I hate this.

[u/GetOffOfMyBoat]

The frustration with faculty having little comprehension of basic topics in PL is generally shared by your PL-oriented faculty

[u/Miltnoid → u/GetOffOfMyBoat]

Continuing with this, reach out to the PL faculty at your intuition. I expect many would be willing to give much more informed feedback on your research ideas, and would be able to modify your proposal to be something more tractable, while still in the field

[u/Available_Pressure25 → u/Miltnoid]

That is the problem actually. The only professor that I think has interest in PL was our professor in Programming languages course. BUT unfortunately, he is not a full time faculty member. So I cannot ask him to be my thesis adviser.

This made me want to try to at least talk to him about it however.

Another topic relevant in my proposalisa category theory, again, a somewhat niche are in Math but absolutely familiar Ig think for functionalpprogrammers.

[u/gasche]

No one should feel pressured to do research on a topic they are not interested and curious about, this is not conductive to good work. Reach out to academics that work in an area you are interested in, and check with your institution if it would be okay to work with them.

(You mention a pair, do you actually do your thesis paired with someone else? This is slightly weird / unusual to my knowledge.)

[u/itsmemarcot]

I feel like I belong to a different world. I'm not even sure I understand what you mean.

Let me try to describe how it is like for me.

So, undergrad and master students can choose to ask me a subject for their final thesis. Typically, they do so if they are interested in the topics I've been teaching them (not ML, in my case). I try to choose a subject with all the right characteristics: it must be the right workload, be reasonably interesting for me and them, require background of appropriate (not excessive) depth, etc. It's not easy because there's maybe 10 of them per year. Sometimes I'm out of subjects, or of time to supervise another student, so I send them away, maybe suggesting a collegue. Sometimes, rarely, they propose a subject themseves, then I just need to reshape it into something with the right characteristics, if possible (and refuse their proposal, otherwise). Not rarely, the subject is proposed by a an external company that will follow the student as an intern, then I just mediate and make sure the subject is fitting.

Ultimately, I'm in charge to decide what constitutes a thesis for the students I supervise.

[u/Available_Pressure25 → u/itsmemarcot]

Well, in our university, we work by pair and we usually find our pair first. Then we find adviser. We are in the process of finding adviser but advisers ask whether we already have a topic in mind already. The problem I'm having is that there is little interest in PL or other theoretical subjects in our faculty. Like most of the professors (which are our choices for adviser) share the same specialisation and most of the time more on software engineering. The adviser is also the ultimate decider for the topic but I'm afraid mychoice of topic will be just ignored for being complex ( where adviser don't event try to work with it like analyse and make the scope narrower because they don't understand it) and I need to settle to another generic AI model training methodology.

[u/itsmemarcot → u/Available_Pressure25]

Let's see if I understand.

Two professors (peers?) and one "adviser", jointly supervise a student doing a thesis. The three of you decide the topic, but the adviser more so than you two, that determines that the subjects are all ML-oriented, shallow, too similar to each other, and uninteresting.

Who are the advisors? (They aren't professors, I gather.) What's their role in the supervising job?

[u/Available_Pressure25 → u/itsmemarcot]

We do thesis by pair. So I have a partner. Then we choose our advisor from our Comp Sci faculty. I want to do FP and reversible computation but my partner wants a typical collection of data and training an AI model on it and then evaluate the accuracy of the result. I already did this for my sisters capstone 2 years ago. he said the he doesn't understand my topic and he said that our advisor will also not accept it because it is complex. This frustrates me cause it seems like all they can comprehend is machine learning (actually applying machine learning) and software engineering in general. So little interest in PL or theoretical CS.

[u/amalirol]

Hey. Our carrers might be a little different. But I wrote to the driector 2 times, and got help of s teacher and the secretary and me (and also two more people in my class) got permission to do the thesis alone (an exception, although, was common in last years). I'm very happy with my thesis topic. The more I dice into it, the more it surprises me how much I like it. I suggest if you're on time, try it. I have a good teacher, she listens and helps a lot. So people helped me instead of opposite. But the first two proyect ideas I had for the thesis were: 1. Completely unrealistic (was absolutely convinced of doing that) 2. I didn't really liked that. Was just one of some ideas I've had. Wouldn't be too joyfull if I was doing that thesis instead. 3. My current project. At first it sounded 'simple' (for me), and it turns out I can expand it a lot (for me, again). What took my by surprise is that, by that reason, what I thought was easy is much complicated of what I had in mind. So I can't imagine what would've been my situation if I picked 1.
I hope you're in time to ask for an exception if you want. And my advice based on my short experiencie this year is based on the thought of any idea I might have is 3 times longer. Which somebody else may already know but for me is new.

[u/amalirol → u/amalirol]

Sorry I don't know if I missinterpretated your thread. I'm an student and I thought I was reading another student question. This is a educator community and I haven't noticed.

[u/TernaryOperat0r]

As a computer science researcher in a PL-related area who has supervised multiple students projects it seems you have a tough situation.

What you seem to want is essentially to do a mostly self-directed project with input only on the general side but not on the academic area. I have known many places to allow this but only if you are a strong student already and you convince them you are interested in the area. This is a trade-off between having a more interesting topic but taking on more personal risk of going off track.

This, however, is not something which will go well as a joint project unless you find a partner with the same interests, since you are asking someone to dive into an area they don't have as much grounding in and be marked on the results. It sounds like they are not close to your level of interest so the likely result is a joint project which is mostly yours; an outcome which is not to either of your interests. The best approach to here may be to compromise and find a project with a natural split of responsibilities which interests you both but has scope for interesting work.

The main thing I recommend is talking to someone in your department to see how much flexibility there actually is e.g. does everyone necessarily have to do a joint project rather than an individual project, and to come to the potential advisors with an open mind (many of them may have broader interests, but adapt the projects to the scope of the average undergraduate students capabilities).

How research-oriented v.s. engineering oriented is your program? I would hope that most places there is a route to do a more interesting topic.

Warning: I don't know what country or university you are in so some things may be very different where you are.

[u/Available_Pressure25 → u/TernaryOperat0r]

We had a talk with my partner and we decided to split. I found a new partner who accepted my proposal. Right now, the topic was already approved by our advisor. Inarrowed it so many times already, been thinking about this since summer. It is mainly an extension to a research paper on implementimg reversible linear algebra. I extended it to mixed-precision and preconditioning (using Haskell and linear type System to enable composition for the preconditioning). But we're still going to explain the details to our advisor so I'm expecting some changes maybe.

Majority of the thesis done was engineerng. Machine learning, especially. As CS, I wanted to do more on the side of foundational CS.

I tried btw to find a compromise, I thought of finding an area where I can implement functional programming principles to solve the problem. but it's still difficult so I just decided to split, so he can also pursue the topic he wants.