PUBLISHING A THESIS IN THE HONORS COLLEGE

Copyright Joseph Kolibal 1998

This document has been established to allow students to develop an honors thesis in the Honors Colege which is consistent with the requirements of the Honors College and consistent with correct usage in the Mathematical Sciences. This approach to producing a thesis is optional, that is you do not have to use these tools to produce your document, however it does provide a consistent framework for producing the thesis.

The language used to produce and typeset the document is LaTeX. Of the possible variations on Tex, this is perhaps the easiest to use when getting started. TeX and LaTeX are typesetting languages which allow great flexibility in producing a document in the mathematical sciences. Furthermore, although the effort to learn TeX and LaTeX is initially larger than for other word processors, there are advantages to using these tools, especially since many technical papers, books and articles in mathematics and the mathematical sciences are required to be set in TeX or LaTeX.

Much of the work of producing a thesis using LaTeX has been simplified in this document. Through the use of predefined style files, the layout of the page is easily controlled. In addition, the files in this example have been annotated and layed out in a manner which allows the novice student to produce an acceptable, professional quality document. If you are not familiar with LaTeX, you can examine some information about in Notes on Using LaTeX and TeX in the section on Using LaTeX on Linux.

Despite all of this, everything is not automated. It is still necessary to be mindful of certain rules which are needed in order to produce a document that is consistent with requirements established Honors College and with good typesetting style. This document is intended to illustrate these points as well as to illustrate the use of several environments which are typical to technical documents in the mathematical sciences. Please take care to make sure that the document produced is indeed consistent with the requirements of the Honors College and with accepted practice in regard to publishing in Mathematics/Physics and Computer Science. This means that it is your responsibility to produce a document which meets the needs of your academic advisor, your graduate committee, and the Honors College.

The sample dissertation produced by this document is set up to provide an illustrative example Honors Thesis. There are two sets of files, PROSPECT and THESIS. The first is to allow you to generate a prospectus. The second, to generate a thesis.

Additional material on using this document may be found at Publishing a Dissertation in the Mathematical Sciences.

Some questions will remain. Links to documentation about TeX and LaTeX is found in TeX and LaTeX Resources.

Obtain a copy of the files in the thesis package (Approximately 201Kb)


Contact


For more information or feedback, please contact:

Joseph Kolibal
Department of Mathematics
Box 5045
Hattiesburg, MS 39406

Telephone: +1 (601) 266-4301
Email: Joseph.Kolibal@usm.edu
FAX: +1 (601) 266-5818

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