Examining a Higher Degree:

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Examining a Higher Degree The View From The
Other Side
Professor Max Bramer University of
Portsmouth United Kingdom www.maxbramer.org
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Choosing an External Examiner

• Nominated by the Director of Studies
• Student can express a preference
• Must not be too close to project
• Academic in UK university (usually)
• Fairly senior (preferably)
• Experienced examiner (normally)
• Internal Examiner is chosen mainly for
  availability
• IE and EE are equal but EE is primus inter pares

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Choosing an External Examiner (2)

• EE is an expert in areas relating to yours but
  not necessarily precisely your area
• You are the leading expert in your area
  (temporarily)

Rule 1 (for Director of Studies) Avoid the
partisan EE opposed to research in any subfield
and by any research group but their own
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Awarding a Higher DegreeThe Students View

• 3 years (or more) of hard work and false starts
• 150-200 pages or more of text
• Frequently many drafts
• Summary justice in a morning or afternoon after a
  sleepless night

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Awarding a Higher DegreeThe Examiners View

• Examining fitted into a busy schedule
• Short period of intensive reading (say 2-3 days),
  plus a lifetimes experience
• Personal interest in the topic
• Onerous travelling in many cases
• Small fee, high responsibility

Rule 2 Make the thesis as interesting and as
clear as possible for someone in a hurry
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Whats at Stake?

• Student
• Future career and income
• Three years work potentially wasted
• Status with friends, family etc.

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Whats at Stake?
Examiner Professional reputation (who was your
external examiner?) May not be asked again (?)
Rule 3 Make the external examiner confident
enough to pass you (see later)
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Possible Outcomes PhD(First Attempt)

• Pass with no changes (lt5)
• Pass with minor changes checked by int. examiner
  (75)
• Major changes and resubmission after a year with
  second viva (20)
• Compensatory MPhil (0)
• Fail (lt1)

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Possible Outcomes PhD(Second Attempt)

• Pass with no changes
• Compensatory MPhil
• Fail
• No changes permitted at this stage
• No further resubmission possible

It is best to avoid a resubmission at the first
attempt all effort needs to be devoted to this
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What Happens at the VivaThe Official Agenda

• Present the two examiners, the candidate and the
  Director of Studies (by invitation only) as
  observer
• The two examiners ask questions in turn (2-3
  hours)
• The examiners confer in private
• The candidate and observer return to hear the
  examiners recommendation

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What Happens at the VivaThe Hidden Agenda

• Negotiation of which items to include in the list
  of changes (there are almost always some)
• Negotiation whether the changes needed are minor
  or major
• Most importantly, the examiners are trying to
  decide whether they are confident to pass the
  candidate (perhaps with minor changes)
• If they are not confident, the easiest and safest
  course is to request a resubmission and a further
  viva

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The Hidden Agenda (2)

• A Rite of Passage

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Preparing for the Viva
Starts the day you begin your PhD
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Relationship with the Supervisor

• A good supervisor will see you regularly, put
  you in contact with the field, help you get
  through the bureaucracy and do everything to
  ensure you pass
• BUT is likely to be busy, so the onus is on you
  to arrange meetings, send papers for discussion
  beforehand etc.

A good relationship between student and
supervisor is essential to the success of any
project. If the relationship breaks down
irrevocably, consider divorce!
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Writing a Thesis

• Make Chapter 1 a mini-thesis
• Signposting in each chapter
• Repetition and redundancy are helpful
• Order of chapters is important (not necessarily
  chronological)
• A thesis is not a diary!
• Dont mention lack of time

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Writing a Thesis (2)

• Spelling, punctuation and grammar matter!
• Clear expression matters (a lot)
• Non-native English speakers need to arrange for a
  native speaker to read drafts through carefully

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Critiquing Thesis Drafts

• One of the supervisors key tasks, so make sure
  he/she has time to do the job properly
• Expect several points marked per page (some
  trivial, others important) even in near-final
  drafts

• If this step is not done thoroughly, the
  examiners will be sure to do it!

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Assessing Your Progress

• Submit your work to public scrutiny (both
  internal and external) as often as possible
• - Seminars
• - Workshops
• - Working papers
• - Conference and Journal Papers
• Discuss your work with people outside your field
• Start doing all this as early as possible

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Preparing for the Viva

• Rehearse answers to standard questions
• What is the original contribution to knowledge
  of this work?
• What are the limitations of your approach?
• How would you propose to develop your work
  further?

• Anticipate likely lines of criticism and prepare
  your response your supervisor can help with this

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The Viva How to Build the Examiners Confidence
(1)
Expert Systems always take 18 months to build
reference 27.
Rule 4 Do not defend the indefensible
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The Viva How to Build The Examiners Confidence
(2)
Less is more. A modest but accurate and well
substantiated claim is enough. Very strong claims
to have solved everything are not necessary, will
not be believed and are almost certainly untrue.
Rule 5 Do not claim too much
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The Viva How to Build the Examiners Confidence
(3)
The discussion will focus on two topics (a) Your
work (b) The broader picture The examiner does
not want to believe all you know about is your
own work.
Rule 6 Make sure you can put your work in
context. Why is it important? Why did you not use
a different method? How does your method relate
to other approaches?
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Defending a Thesis

• Examiners will have already formed an opinion
  based on the written thesis. A good viva can
  improve it. A bad one can ruin it.
• Most examiners would much prefer to pass the
  candidate and want to be persuaded to do so
• Vital that answers make the examiners more
  confident not less
• An open mind and a proper scientific approach is
  far more important than trying to justify every
  word of the thesis (pass mark is not 100)

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Rule 7 Make Sure Your Conclusions Follow From
Your Premises
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What to Avoid (1)Mind Your Language

• Everyone knows that
• There is no doubt that
• I have proved that
• X is well-known to be the best method of
• It is clear that
• No-one can dispute that

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What to Avoid (2)Do Not Criticise Other
Researchers

• All previous researchers have made the false
  assumption that
• Einstein had the mistaken view that
• No-one else has ever worked on .

Just say what you have done and examine the
evidence for its being a small improvement on
previous work. That is all that is needed.
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What to Avoid (3)Do Not Criticise Other
Researchers
Especially not the examiners friends.
Dr. X clearly does not understand the work of
John Stuart Mill.
Summary of 1 to 3 Do not waste the examiners
goodwill by unsupported and unscientific comments
on fringe issues.
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What to Avoid (4)Small Examples
that do not scale up e.g. model-based reasoning
for a circuit with 5 components (6 possible
solutions) that could easily be handled by
other methods
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What to Avoid (5)Missing/'Optimistic' Evaluation
'Fully evaluated' but no results in the
thesis 'Best results in the world' (see reference
24).
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What to Avoid (6)Unsound Evaluation
Two data mining examples Evaluating a trained
model on the training data Using a model on
unseen data needs a human expert to be present
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What to Avoid (7)Horror Stories

• Xs algorithm runs 1000 times faster than C4.5
• A method which chooses between 2 equally likely
  possibilities with 30 accuracy
• A method that predicts rare events less
  accurately than chance

It is not necessary to be an expert to spot
problems like these. Any competent reader should
be able to do it. So why do mistakes like these
keep being made?
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And Finally

• Good luck!
• But remember

You make your own luck
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Examining a Higher Degree The View From The
Other Side
Professor Max Bramer University of
Portsmouth United Kingdom www.maxbramer.org