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
From the equation y  ax  b it follows that
x  ( y  b) / a.

• Bad

y  ax  b x  ( y  b) / a
 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
 African elephant
Asian elephant

8
Human
Giraffe
Horse
Chimpanzee
DonkeyCow
Gorilla
6

Rhesus monkeySheep Pig

log(Animals$brain)

Jaguar Brachiosaurus
Bad! Grey
Potar monkey
Goat wolf
Triceratops
Kangaroo Dipliodocus
4

Cat

Rabbit
Mountain beaver
2

Guinea pig
Mole
Rat
Golden hamster
0

Mouse

0 5 10

log(Animals$body)
 African elephant
Asian elephant

8
Human
Giraffe Horse
Donkey
Chimpanzee Cow
6 Sheep
Gorilla
Log Brain weight (gm)

Rhesus monkey Pig

Jaguar Brachiosaurus
Potar monkey Grey wolf
Goat
Triceratops
Kangaroo Dipliodocus
4

Better! Cat

Rabbit
Mountain beaver
2

Guinea pig
Mole
Rat
Golden hamster
0

Mouse

0 5 10

Log Body weight (kg)

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
Multiple Prefix Symbol
1012 tera T
109 giga G Too busy
106 mega M
103 kilo K
10-1 deci d
Multiple Prefix Symbol
1012 tera T
Better
109
giga G
106 mega M
103 kilo K
10-1 deci d
Multiple 1012 109 106 103 10-1 Horizontal
Prefix tera giga mega kilo deci hard to read
Symbol T G M K d

Multiple Prefix Symbol

1012 tera T
Vertical
109
giga G
easier to read
106 mega M
103 kilo K
10-1 deci d
Number of
Time (secs)
Processors
Busy – too
1 28.35221
many DP’s
4 7.218812
8 3.634951
16 1.929347
Number of
Time (secs)
Processors
Better
1 28.35
4 7.21
8 3.63
16 1.92
 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