Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2004 14:42:20 -0800 (PST)

From: David Sprague <dsprague@cs.ubc.ca>

To: grads@cs.ubc.ca

Subject: Beer and theses....

It is that time of year again that new students have to decide what their

research projects will be (or suffer the wrath of Joyce Poon). Well what

better way to help you become informed about this life altering decision

than discussing by conversing with your fellow grad students. For those

of you that are currently pursuing your research, you can feel smart and

powerful by giving newbies advice. Everybody wins.* On this note, this

week's list will not necessarily involve beer, but instead involves thesis

topics. I doubt all of them are funny (see above comments. Place yours

truly in catergory 1: No project yet. Thus limited time to develop this

week's list), but I am hoping at least one will make you chuckle. Enjoy.

* Unless you consider that the amount of time spent drinking beer you

could be working on various projects. In this case you are not winning so

much as just getting loaded.

Top Ten Rejected Thesis Proposal Titles

10. "Identifying when a program will hault or not."

9."The Electro Shock Mouse (ESM): An intelligent tutoring system using

operant conditioning."

8. "Hop on Pop: A literary review and iterative design strategy"

7. "A graduate student's practical evaluation of kill/death ratios while

playing Counterstrike."

6. "A practical tutoring system to train people not to spell my name as

'Lion' " by Lior Berry

5. "Why My Little Pony rocks"

4. "A field study exploring the effect of coffee mug size on co-worker

reactions."

3. "Writing the world's first robust Javascript OS."

2. "Yet another HCI user study"

1. "Practical data mining: Exploring my old Archie comics for hidden

messages."

-0. "Why everyone is stupid but me"

-1."<blah blah blah> Fitts' Law <blah blah blah>"

-2. "A participatory design of a alcoholic beverage consumption

methodology for graduate students"

So on that cheery note, I invite you all to come down to Koerner's at 5pm

(we will be meeting in the CISCR lobby as usual) to share experience,

idea, and (most importantly) beer.

David "A field study on the effects of student project indecisiveness on

Joyce Poon's mental state" Sprague