MSc Mathematical Finance - Dissertation

Students complete a dissertation on a topic chosen in consultation with their Supervisor and the Course Director.  

• Examples of past dissertations that have been highly commended by the Examiners.
• LaTeX style files, templates, and university crest.

We express our gratitude to those past students who have agreed to let us publish their work.  

Some thoughts on picking a topic for a dissertation

1. Try to use points in lectures mentioned as "research ongoing" or "unknown" as kick-off points for investigation. The people who brought up the issue can of course be regarded as potential supervisors.

2. Given your status, often working for some organization, one good place to start is to try to think of something that relates to something your employer is involved in. Whether you are in a financial institution or a consulting firm, there may be a project that due to time constraints you have not got to the bottom of mathematically and you wish to do so. A constraint on this is that there should be some mathematical substance to the project. If you have recently been doing e.g. front end development there is not a lot of scope there. But if you have been implementing some modelling numerically, perhaps under pressure to do something quickly, then a more substantial investigation of how to do it optimally, with some numerical analysis, might be a good idea. This sort of approach can be quite good as you might get a bit more latitude from your employer to spend a bit of time on it at work, which always helps.

3. Make a list of trendy issues and do a lit search on the web and elsewhere to see where research is and where it is going. Sometimes papers get published which are very mathematical and obscure in how they might be applied in practice. Sometimes quite a good dissertations can be done on a technology translation basis to make it all intelligible to practitioners and perhaps do a basic implementation in software - we have had some excellent work on this theme.

4. A list of people conducting financial research at Oxford with a selection of research areas can be found here.

Working on your dissertation

This is stating the obvious for students at your level, but PLEASE do not leave everything to the last minute. This is best done continuously over several months, and for that reason it is good to pick a topic and get working as early as possible. It should not be necessary for you to take a large block of time away from work, though a couple of days to finalize the project might be useful at the end.

The mechanics of writing a dissertation

The dissertation should not be more than fifty single spaced typed pages of A4 in a font no smaller than 10 pt (excluding appendices and figures) and must be a substantial piece of academic work.

Useful (unsupported) templates for LaTeX

It is up to you what system to write your thesis with, but the Academic Team implore you to do it in LaTeX. The quality of the output far exceeds any other system, including all mainstream word processors. You can get it for free or for a small shareware fee for any major computer environment. There is help on the Mathematical Institute web site here.

The formalities

Approval of Topic

A session is held prior to the written examinations outlining the principles of selecting a Dissertation Project.  You are encouraged to make a project proposal based on your work.  You will be allocated a Provisional Supervisor.  You may consult your Provisional Supervisor for advice about your project proposal.  You should send in your proposal as soon as possible and in any case within three weeks of the assignment submission deadline for the final advanced module on which you are being assessed.  You may want to propose an ‘External’ Supervisor – perhaps someone in an industrial setting.  You should provide the details of this along with your project proposal.  

You must make a proposal of maximum 350 words on the form on the course website.  You should send this to mathfin [-at-] maths [dot] ox [dot] ac [dot] uk (see also the Mathematical Finance Administrative Office.)

The description should address:

1)    The research question

2)    Background to area (including work already carried out in this area) and justify the need for the research

3)    Proposed methods

4)    Potential problems and how to overcome them

5)    How your study will contribute to the field of Mathematical Finance

Project Proposals and Supervisors require the approval of the Examiners in consultation with the Course Directors where necessary.  Once your proposal and Supervisor have been approved, you should work to make good progress on your Dissertation as soon as possible. 

Scope of the Dissertation: The Dissertation is a work of original research.  This can constitute numerical algorithms and/or developments or extensions of mathematical results.  The length will typically be 40-45 sides of single spaced A4.  It should be typeset in LaTeX and with a scrupulously accurate bibliography, table of contents and acknowledgements.  Figures and tables should be accurately referenced and captioned.  Use of English and presentation of mathematical formulae should be correct and accurate.  Your Supervisor will liaise with you to ensure these qualities, but ultimately it is your responsibility.

Supervision and GSS

Your Project Supervisor should be available for regular contact to discuss your Dissertation (in many cases this will necessarily be via email, telephone, or other remote means).  They will be in contact with you at least once a term.  In the case that you have an External Supervisor an Internal[1] Supervisor will also be appointed to help ensure that things are progressing well, to report on progress within the University’s supervision system, and to advise you both as necessary. 

Supervisors use the new online Graduate Supervision System to complete termly reports on progress, and it is also possible for students to submit an assessment on their progress each term, and to raise any concerns.  You will need to go to http://www.gss.ox.ac.uk/ to do this, and will need your University ‘single sign-on’ details (see Appendix A).  Reports by both Supervisor and student can be viewed by the Director of Graduate Studies and relevant college staff.

Submission and Format

[See Course Handbook Section 4 Examination Regulations and Section 5 Examination Conventions for details of the examination of the dissertation.]

 The dissertation should be submitted as a single pdf file via the online system on the Mathematical Institute website at

 https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/add/course-work 

You will need your Mathematical Institute I.T. account username and password to submit work to this site.  If you have any difficulties with this username and password please email help [-at-] maths [dot] ox [dot] ac [dot] uk

The website will supply you with a confirmation email (to your Mathematical Institute email account) upon submission of the dissertation.   If you are supplied with such an email you can be sure that your work has been successfully submitted.  You should keep the email for your own records.When you submit the work you will be required to confirm that the work is entirely your own, except where otherwise indicated, and that it has not been submitted either wholly or substantially for any other course.  Submitted dissertations will be screened by Turnitin software which will compare them to a wide range of material (both published and unpublished) and to the work of other candidates.  The Examiners will be notified of the extent of any textual matches discovered by Turnitin, and will consider, for instance, whether any text that a candidate has copied from elsewhere is properly identified and the source duly acknowledged.

See http://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academic/goodpractice/about/ and Appendix C for further guidance on academic good practice including referencing.You must submit ONE electronic file.  Any subsidiary programming or other files which you wish to submit must be included, as an appendix, within this single file. 

In the extremely unlikely event that there does seem to be some technical problem and you are concerned that your work has not been submitted please email it immediately to mathfin [-at-] maths [dot] ox [dot] ac [dot] uk 

If for some reason you are unable to submit work electronically you may apply in advance to submit it in paper form – see Course Handbook Examination Regulations for details. 

Dissertations should be typeset in LaTeX.  You are strongly advised to keep a separate back up (e.g. on disk or memory stick) as you proceed, as well as a back up copy after you have submitted it.

 Your name, and the name of your College, should appear on the cover along with the title, the year of submission and the name of any employing organisation if the student wishes to include it. 

 You will be asked to declare whether, after you have been classified, the Dissertation may be made publically available. 

Deadlines for Submission 

The University’s Standard Submission Deadlines are:

 Michaelmas Term - 17 December,

Hilary Term - 19 April,

Trinity Term - 30 September

(if a date falls on a weekend then the deadline is the nearest Friday). 

Submission of the MSc Dissertation will normally be at the end of the seventh term following the start of the course, (usually 19 April in the third calendar year). If a candidate has some unavoidable difficulty in meeting the deadline, say due to ill health, they may apply via their college to the Proctors for an extension.  This must only be done in circumstances of the most extreme kind, and is reserved for cases of sudden and serious ill health or some other personal tragedy or catastrophe.  Students must inform the Proctors via their college as soon as possible and before the submission deadline.

 Students who require a longer extension of several weeks or months, and who anticipate this need in advance, say because of increased work load, should seek an extension of time - see Section 10.3 of the Course Handbook.

Permission to Publish