Should I mention in my thesis that a live demonstration motivated me to implement an algorithm instead of others?

Question

I am currently writing my bachelor thesis, in which I compare different algorithms for solving a specific problem to each other. Since there are a lot of available published approaches, I did a literature review to choose algorithms relevant for me to implement. In my thesis I would like to justify my choice of algorithms.

For one of these, I was convinced by a live demonstration on an exhibition-like event, where the algorithm was shown to perform reasonably well in real-time on the target platform.

My questions regarding this situation are

1. Does my personal, subjective experience with this algorithm justify its implementation?
2. If so, what would be the appropriate way to mention this in a thesis context?

I imagine this kind of question could also potentially be relevant to other types of theses or publications, which is why I chose the respective tags.

Answer 1

Yeah, definitely.

Comments on the reason you started work are totally appropriate in the introduction of a thesis and even make it a little less dry. It makes it a little more of a narrative. You still have to show all the dry results and analysis and all that. But some minicum of storyline is actually a positive.

Actually even in a paper (where you are limited in format and space to concentrate more on results), some motivational comments in the intro are still totally in place in the introduction. They set context, they help people. In a thesis, even more scope is available and desired for explaining motivation (which gives contextual insights). In science talks it is also very important (not just allowed) to show motivation (personal, economic, or social) in the intro.

I'm sure it is possible to overdo it, but in general, the issue is more the opposite (people not explaining personal motivation, inspiration from other researchers, economic motivations, etc. sufficiently).