Dear reading committee members:

Here is a draft of my thesis that is 95% complete.  

Since I am going to be in Honduras Feb 8-27 and communication may prove 
difficult, I'd like to propose the following schedule:


Feb 7-20  Read enough to assess my readiness to defend.

Feb 20    Email Russ with a yes/no about my readiness.  
          Yes means you think I will be able to defend on March 13 
          and that Russ should submit the request for an exam to 
          the graduate school.  No means you believe further work is 
          necessary before the defense, and that it should be postponed.

Feb 20-27 Continue reading

Feb 27    I return from Honduras, distribute chapter 5, and contact you 
          to arrange meetings during the first week of March.  

Mar 3-7   You give me written and/or oral comments. 

Mar 13    Defense and agreement on required thesis alterations 

After:    Revised thesis must be submitted within 60 days of defense


Please note that I have included my final chapter (5) only as an outline.  
Chapter 5 is about 70% complete, but Russ and I agreed that I should 
revise it by the end of February and distribute it on March 1.  It is 
relatively short, so I hope this will not inconvenience you excessively, 
or prevent you from assessing my readiness to defend. 

Also, I make a number of (hypertext) references to animations in the thesis.  
For the moment, I have put together a web page that presents all the animations: 

http://www.econscience.org/scott/animations

There you will also find a PDF of the thesis (~5Mb) which I recommend you 
keep handy as many of my figures utilize color (a backup copy is at: 
www2.ocean.washington.edu/~scottv/thesis/).  Russ has volunteered to 
put the web page and animations on a CDROM if necessary.  Such a CDROM 
and/or web page will likely accompany the final thesis, depending on the 
preferences of the graduate school. 

Thank you very much for agreeing to serve on my reading committee.  
I look forward to your thoughts and constructive criticism.

Sincerely,
Scott