Thesis Results Are In

... and I am required to resubmit the thesis in revised form for examination after a suitable period of study and/or research.

I can't say that I'm particularly surprised, but it is also a pain. Technically, all the original work was fine. However, there are insufficient comparisons to existing algorithms. Specifically, the reviewers want to see CPU time results, and want comparisons to backtracking algorithms that use variable reordering. My thesis only includes algorithms and comparisons that were state-of-the-art when I wrote it...

On the plus side, I'm not getting the worst possible assessment. Here is the list of possible assessments I could have received (I got the 3rd assessment from one reviewer, and the 5th one from the other):

1. Acceptable, no changes.
2. Minor revisions, checked by head of postgrad studies.
3. Major revisions, checked by head of postgrad studies.
4. Major revisions, checked by examiners.
5. Major revisions, re-review by examiners.
6. Oral examination to check you know your stuff.
7. Accepted, for Masters.
8. Revise and resubmit, for Masters.
9. Fail.

Now I just need to decide on a time for me to restart thesis work. As I have to reimplement a bunch of algorithms, I think I might port all development over to Java and run them on Emily's beast of a computer. :)

Update: Trying to list out the positives... They didn't criticise the rather "unique" approach of my literature review. (I'd been having nightmares that they'd toss the thesis out for that chapter.) They appreciated the original research component. They liked the intuitive explanations. The hypertree decomposition work wasn't integrated into the thesis, but only small changes are required. All I need to do is write up a few more algorithms and run a new round of experiments. My algorithm doesn't even have to be better than the other algorithms. I just have to compare it. All in all, things could have been a lot worse.