Report
Report
• Ability to communicate ideas and results
• Presentation is almost as important as the results!
• Much of your degree assessment is from reports
• Success at work: 20% ability, 80% communication
• Key to successful technical document is clarity and succinctness
• Preparing clear diagrams is an important skill too • Gooddatapresentationessential
Report preparation cont:
• STRUCTURE
• A typical technical report has following structure:
• Summary
• Introduction
• Main body of report • Conclusion
• Summary
• Summary is at start of report
• The reader needs to know if report is worth reading
• It is usually no more than one page long
• It is a brief statement of objectives, method and conclusions
• Introduction
• Introduction provides essential background knowledge
• Convince the reader you are knowledgeable of your subject
• It also serves to provide context of current investigation
• This section is as long as it needs to be
Report preparation cont:
• Main body of the report
• This contains the main body of investigation
• Typically the main body consists of three sections:
• 1. Methodology
• 2. Results
• 3. Discussion
• Main body: 1. methodology
• What techniques are you using? Describe them!
• It might be experimental work
• It might be a computational method you used
• But make it clear what you did and what you used
• Main body: 2. results
• Provide important, representative results of your investigation
• You may have to leave a lot of results out….
• …but make sure you get your message across
Report preparation cont: Main body: 3. discussion
• If it’s a research report, explain how your results contribute to the field you are investigating
• If it’s a laboratory report, here is your chance to show you understand the laboratory and the theory
• Very often you need to do some additional data analysis here to prove your point or demonstrate an idea
Report preparation cont: • Briefly state your main findings
Conclusion
Report preparation cont:
Organization of report
•Use clearly numbered sections, for example as follows:
1. Introduction 2. Methodology 3. Results
4. Discussion 5. Conclusions
•Use subsections within the main sections to provide structure
Writing style
•You need to use clear, unambiguous language •Avoid the first person (i.e. “I” or “my”)
•Bad spelling and punctuation misleads the reader
•Take care with spell checkers
•Avoid repetition, as it makes the report over-lengthy •Be succinct in your descriptions
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Report preparation cont:
Diagrams (1): use of diagrams
•Diagrams are figures or graphs
•These show results and data in graphical form
•Embed diagrams in body of text, or put them together at the end of each section, or in a separate section at the back of the report after the references
•Important diagrams NEVER go in an appendix •Refer to diagrams in the text using a figure number.
•This tells the reader where to look.
•The diagram should be clear, well-labelled and annotated
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Report preparation cont:
Diagrams (2): preparation of diagrams •The diagram shown is acceptable •Do not over-complicate the data •Label the axes clearly
•Use legends when multiple sets of data are being presented
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Report preparation cont:
Diagrams (3): clear labelling is essential
•The figure title provides key technical information regarding the diagram •In the report refer to the figure by its number, in this case figure 1. •Never put a figure in the report and not refer to it in the text
•Here the diagram has been annotated to indicate significant features.
120
110
100
90 80 70 60 50
primary vortex
secondary vortex Wing surface
Primary vortex
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 x/ mm
Figure 1 Velocity vector map of delta wing vortex flow field at 12 degrees: 80% root chord location. Re=150000. Leading edge at bottom right of map. Circular symbol indicates maximum velocity of 6ms-1. The wing surface is indicated.
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y/ mm
Report preparation cont: Diagrams (4): be careful with use of colour…..
•Very pretty, but is the colour essential? •Reports get photocopied, and colour information gets lost
•Colour printing is not cheap
•Same data, contour plotted with labels
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Report preparation cont:
Diagrams (5): what not to do…..
•Many students take figures off the internet or scan from books •You should not do it
•You may breach copyright (it’s not your data)
•Too many will look like the diagram shown
•Students have presented data looking like this •It is useless
•Get used to preparing your own diagrams
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Report preparation cont:
References (1): when to use them
•In any technical investigation you must make use of earlier work by other investigators or even yourself
•If you make use of or make reference to any data from another investigation, this must be made clear
•Refer to the work by either:
•Author and year, e.g. “as described by Green (1998)” 1
•Sequential numbering, e.g. “as observed by Green ”.
•Which method you use is a personal preference, but be consistent throughout your document
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Report preparation cont:
References (2): how to list them
•References are placed in a separate section at the back of the report •For author-year system list references alphabetically
•For sequential numbering system list references sequentially •Journals require authors, title of paper, volume and edition number (if applicable) and page range
•Books require author, name of text, edition number and publisher
•Hence for author-year system
Green, R.B. & Gerrard, J.H. (1993) “Vorticity measurements in the near wake of a bluff body at low
Reynolds numbers” Journal of Fluid Mechanics, vol. 246, pp 675-691
Zdravkovich, M.M. (1997) “Flow around circular cylinders. Volume1: Fundamentals” 1st edition, Oxford University Press
•and for number system
1. Zdravkovich, M.M. (1997) “Flow around circular cylinders. Volume1: Fundamentals” 1st edition,
Oxford University Press
2. Green, R.B. & Gerrard, J.H. (1993) “Vorticity measurements in the near wake of a bluff body at low Reynolds numbers” Journal of Fluid Mechanics, vol. 246, pp 675-691
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Report preparation cont:
Appendices
•Appendices contain useful additional information •Anything in an appendix is not of crucial importance
•report should not suffer if appendix is removed! •typically contains tabulated data, computer codes etc
Contents page
•Contents page clearly indicates section & sub-section headings •Always provide page numbers
1. Introduction 2. Method
3. Results
4. Discussion 5. Conclusions
References Figures Appendix 1
1 11 14 21 25
26 28 30
Contents
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Report Marking
How is this done?
•Reports are marked according to a scheme based on the university’s code of assessment
•See the Appendix A of the student handbook for this
•So an A grade means excellent, for example
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