How to Write a Good Report

How to Write a Good Report Alan Lee

Contents • What makes a good report? • Clarity and Structure • Figures and Tables (floats) • Technical Issues • Further reading • Conclusions

The purpose.... • The report exists to provide the reader with useful information • Should this drug be licensed? • How do we fit non-linear regressions? • It succeeds if it effectively communicates the information to the intended audience • It fails otherwise!!

To succeed... The report must be • Clear • Well structured, clear, concise, suitable for the intended audience • Professional • statistically correct, correctly spelled, produced with a decent word processor • Well illustrated • illustrations that aid understanding, integrated with text

The audience Often 3 different audiences • The casual reader/big boss who wants the main message as painlessly as possible • The interested reader who wants more detail but doesn’t want to grapple with all the gory technical details • The guru who wants the whole story

What to do? To address all 3 audiences effectively, • Include an abstract for the big boss • A main body for the interested non-specialist • A technical appendix for the guru Thus, a structure emerges!

Structure • Good structure enhances and encourages clarity • Gives signposts • implements the vital principle • tell them what you are going to say • Say it! • tell them what you have said

Structure: details A good report has the following parts • Title • Table of Contents • Abstract/executive summary • Introduction • Main sections • Conclusions • References • Technical appendix

Title Should be informative, “punchy”, can include puns, humour Good • The perfidious polynomial (punchy, alliterative) • Diagnosing diabetes mellitus: how to test, who to test, when to test (dramatic, informative) Bad • Some bounds on the distribution of certain quadratic forms in normal random variables (boring, vague) • Performing roundoff analyses of statistical algorithms (boring, vague)

Table of Contents • Shows the structure of the document and lets the reader navigate through the sections • Include for documents more than a few pages long.

Abstract/executive summary Describes the problem and the solution in a few sentences. It will be all the big boss reads! Remember the 2 rules • Keep it short • State problem and solution

The Introduction • State the question, background the problem • Describe similar work • Outline the approach • Describe the contents of the rest of the paper • in Section 2 we ... • in Section 3 we ...

Further sections • Describe • Data • Methods • Analyses • Findings • Don’t include too much technical detail • Divide up into sections, subsections

Conclusions/summary • Summarize what has been discovered • Repeat the question • Give the answer

Appendix • This is where the technical details go • Be as technical as you like • Document your analysis so it can be reproduced by others • Include the data set if feasible

References • Always cite (i.e. give a reference) to other related work or facts/opinions that you quote • Never pass off the work of others as your own – this is plagiarism and is a very big academic crime!!

How to cite • In the text Seber and Wild (1989) state that….. • In the references Seber, G.A.F and C.J. Wild. (1989). Nonlinear Regression. New York: Wiley.

Writing clearly • Structure alone is not enough for clarity – you must also write clear sentences. • Rules: • Write complete short sentences • Avoid jargon and cliché, strive for simplicity • One theme per paragraph • If a sentence contains maths, it still must make sense!

AGHHHH! • He wrote Although solitary under normal prevailing circumstances, raccoons may congregate simultaneously in certain situations of artificially enhanced resource availability. • He meant.. Raccoons live alone but come together to eat bait.

Maths • Good • Bad

Figures and Tables (Floats) Golden rules for Figures and Tables: • Describe float in text (integration), make sure it matches description • Place after the first mention in the text • Make sure float conveys the desired message clearly: keep it simple! • Provide informative captions

Figures • Always label and give a caption under the figure • Be aware of good graphics principles: avoid • chart junk • low data/ink ratio • unlabelled axes • broken axes • Misleading scales • See Cleveland, “The Elements of Graphing Data”, “Visualising Data” • Using a good graphics package (R!) helps enforce good practice

Bad!

Better! Figure 1. Plot of log Brain weights (gm) versus log body weights (kg) for 28 species

Tables • Always label and give a caption over the table • Be aware of rules for good tables: • avoid vertical lines • don’t have too many decimal places • compare columns not rows

Too busy Better

Horizontal hard to read Vertical easier to read

Busy – too many DP’s Better

Technical Issues • Sectioning • Table of Contents • Spelling and Grammar • Choice of word processor

Sectioning • Proper division of your work into sections and subsections makes the structure clear and the document easy to follow • Use styles in word/ sectioning commands in Latex \begin{section}….\end{section}

Table of contents • Provides “navigation aid” • Make sure TOC agrees with main body of text • If you use styles (Word) and sectioning commands (Latex) this will happen automatically

Spelling and Grammar • Use a style manual/dictionary if in doubt • Spell check!!!! • Proofread!!!! He meant… • This technique can also be applied to the analysis of golf balls He typed…. • This technique cam also by applies to the analysis or gold bills

Choice of word processor • Word or Latex? • My spin….. • Use Word for a short document with few figures and tables and little mathematics • Use Latex for a longer document with many figures and tables and lots of complicated maths.

Further reading • There are many excellent books giving good advice on technical writing. • Two I like are Higham, Nicholas (1993) Handbook of writing for the Mathematical Sciences, Philadelphia, SIAM. Silyn-Roberts, Heather (2000). Writing for Science and Engineering: Papers Presentations and Reports. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinmann. Both discuss writing reports and giving verbal presentations.

Conclusions • Structure is vital • Write clearly • Good clear simple illustrations • Spellcheck and proofread • Reference all material used or quoted

How to Write a Good Report