Hi all,

your examiners have been (and are) busy providing feedback on your reports. As a
by-product, we've collected a number of comments that might be of use to all of
you. Some of these comments you might recognise as given to your group
specifically, some (or many/all) you will not, but we think they will still be of
interest to all of you, so here we go:

Don't write a diary, but a scientific report. Be complete, but brief. This about
what the reader needs to know and how to convey that information as efficiently as
possible.

Don't write: "First we tried A, but then we encountered issue B and so we had to
use C instead." Write about the outcomes and how you reached them: "Because of
issue B, using technique A does not work (+ explanation?) and so C has to be used
instead."

Don't write: "We needed to find a way to decide on A or not A, so we computed B

using a for-loop and compared B to a value that we chose. We chose C for this
value." Do write: "We defined A as having a value of B greater than C."

Don't focus on implementation details when they don't add to your story. Don't
write "We computed A using two for-loops and a an if statement." But do explain
details when they mattered: "Because of B, letting the outer for-loop run over all
students and the inner for-loop over all course makes the computer explode, so it
is necessary to go over all courses in the outer for-loop instead."

Make your meaning clear, as clear as possible. When one person of your group wrote
a paragraph, all others should do their best to misunderstand everything written
and communicate this back or correct themselves. The one who finds the funniest
possible misunderstanding wins a point. Repeat until misunderstandings become
impossible! (And while you are looking for ways to misunderstand each other, also
correct each other's grammar.)

Often the easiest way to make the meaning of something complex clear, is to use the
correct form of communication. Mathematical notation makes it much easier to
communicate a formula. Pseudo-code was invented to communicate algorithms. A
drawing or graph also have their purposes.

Use subtitles to structure your text and offer the reader some assistance when
reading your report. Explicitly warning the reader that the next paragraph is
going to be about something new can be very helpful.

Make sure there is a good reason for everything in your text. For every sentence,
figure, table, etc. you should be able to explain what the reader will learn from
it. Otherwise, don't spend time writing it, and avoid your reader from having to
spend time reading it.

Be complete however. Don't say "A was more accurate than B." without mentioning
the accuracies and explain how you computed them (using a formula, or some pseudo
code if helpful). In principle, every result in your report should be reproducible
given the information provided (except the data of course) in your report.

It has also been brought to our attention, and so we consider it imperative to

share with you as our audience, that the overzealous use of extensively constructed
sentences and proclamations may squander away the attention normally accompanying
an otherwise severely interested consumer of your poetic yet scientifically
grounded expositions.
If you do formulate research questions, make sure they are answerable. A question
like: "How can we use machine learning to predict the weather?" might actually
require many books to be written to answer it completely. Limit the scope of your
question to what you can answer during this project.

If you designed a method, or picked a parameter, or selected a subset of the data,

or basically made any important decision whatsoever, explain _why_ you made that
decision. Explain why your method is (presumably) correct, why the parameter
choice was appropriate, why selecting that specific subset was right … Motivate
your choices. This might also require you to think about what choices or
assumptions you are making, maybe without realising you are making them.

Kind regards,

Your examiners