In a thesis, figures and tables are included in

Concept: A thesis is built from three blocks — the prefatory pages, the main body of numbered chapters, and the terminal sections such as references and appendices. Where any element is placed follows how the reader uses it: whatever a reader must have in view in order to follow the argument stays inside the main body at the point where it is used, while material that only documents or supports the work is carried to a terminal section for optional consultation.

Application: Figures and tables are display forms of the very evidence the writer is interpreting — a chart of results, a table of means, a diagram of the research design. The sentences that analyse them cannot be read without them in view, so each one is set in the text itself: numbered sequentially in the order of first mention, given a caption, introduced by a sentence that refers to it, and placed on or immediately after the page carrying that reference.

Cross-check — what the other locations hold:

• The appendix is a terminal section for bulky supporting documentation — raw data sheets, blank questionnaires, permission letters, long derivations — that a reader may consult optionally after the argument is complete.

• A separate chapter is a self-contained division devoted to one stage of the study, such as the literature review, the methodology or the results, written as continuous prose that advances that stage.

• The concluding chapter closes the thesis with a prose synthesis — summary of findings, implications, limitations and recommendations — drawn from analysis that earlier chapters have already carried out.

So figures and tables sit in the text itself, close to the discussion that interprets them; only bulky supplementary material such as complete data sets or full instruments is moved to the appendix.