Writing Styles and Structuring Report�

Dr Norizan Mat Diah

Adapted from:

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1. Dr Nur Atiqah Sia Abdullah,
2. Nurazzah Abdul Rahman
3. Dr Norhaslinda Kamaruddin
4. Dr Suriyani Ariffin

Learning Outcomes

Expectation at Degree level

At the degree level (in CS253), you are expected to be able to:

• Demonstrate knowledge of programming
• Analyse relevant materials / literature
• Develop the algorithm / technique
• Apply the algorithm / technique to your system
• Evaluate the algorithm / technique / system within the context of study (functionality test, focus group evaluation, or evaluation metrics according to your domain)

What is academic writing?

Academic Writing at Degree Level

Tips in Writing Report

• Aim for precision
• Straight to the point. Make simple sentence. Avoid unnecessary words.
• If there is any uncertainty, use cautious language
• Words such as ‘may’, ‘might’, ‘could’, ‘potentially’, etc
• Avoid over-long sentences
• Aim for a mixture of long and short sentences for variation and rhythm
• Avoid repeating same words or sentences
• Use simple words if it is not technical related

Tips in Writing Report (continued…)

• Use technical language where appropriate
• Avoid using exclamations
• Avoid using sentence fragments (“and” or “but”)
• Do not over claimed (E.g: The best technique….)
• Avoid abbreviations and contractions
• “Department” should be used instead of “dept”
• “Is not” should be used instead of “isn’t”

Tips in Writing Report (continued…)

• Avoid writing impersonal
• In many academic disciplines, writing in the first person is not acceptable as it is believed to be too subjective and personal
• Pronouns like “I” and “We” are not encouraged
• The following sentences should be transformed:
• We have considered ….

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• I suggest that ….

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• I have observed that ….

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Consideration has been given to …

The suggestion is to …

It has been observed that …

Check on this paragraph

Today being fat is totally bad for your health. About 30,000 fat people die every year in the UK and loads more fat people die in the USA. By 2005 more people will die of being fat than smoking and it doesn’t have to be this way, this could easily be prevented, couldn't it?

Can you improve this paragraph?

Suggestion:

The number of deaths per year contributed to obesity is roughly 30,000 people in the UK and the number even more in USA. Obesity is set to overtake smoking by 2005 as the main preventable cause of illness and premature death.

Similarities between Essays and Reports

• Both use formal academic style
• Have some form of introduction, main body and a conclusion
• Contain critical analysis
• Are well structured and presented

Differences between Essays and Reports

• Essays
• Tent to present an argument
• Focus on evaluating or analysing theories, past research by other people and ideas
• Rarely include new or original research
• Are meant to be read carefully
• Do not generally include recommendations
• Are mostly used in academic settings

• Reports
• Present information
• Present data and findings that you have collected / developed
• Include experiment, development, survey, case study or particular experience
• Are divided into separate sections
• The structure can be scanned quickly
• Include recommendations for action
• Are typical of writing produced in the workplace

Writing Process

Writing Styles

• Summarize
• to express the most important facts or ideas about something
• Paraphrase
• to express the meaning in other words
• Synthesize
• Creative construction of ideas from multiple sources to form a new, integrated, and meaningful subject
• Analyse
• Separation of a complex idea into its constituent parts and an understanding of organization and relationship between the parts
• Evaluate
• To make a judgment of ideas or methods using external evidence or self-selected criteria substantiated by observations or informed rationalizations

Section in the report/thesis

1. Draft your table of contents based on guideline given from faculty
2. Identify sub-sections for every chapter
3. Identify sub-sub-sections
4. Search example dissertation from other university from online database to get an idea
5. Discuss the draft of TOC with your supervisor

Table of contents – Sample A

SUPERVISOR’S APPROVAL

STUDENT’S DECLARATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

ABSTRACT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES

LIST OF TABLES

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW

CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

CHAPTER FOUR: RESEARCH DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

CHAPTER FIVE: RESULT AND ANALYSIS

CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

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REFERENCES

APPENDIX

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Table of contents – Sample B

SUPERVISOR’S APPROVAL

STUDENT’S DECLARATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

ABSTRACT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES

LIST OF TABLES

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW

CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

CHAPTER FOUR:RESULT AND ANALYSIS

CHAPTER FIVE:CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

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REFERENCES

APPENDIX

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Content of Chapter one

Detail Contents of Chapter One

• Background – what is the content in the background?
• Problem statement – must have references and citations (anchor papers/proceedings/journals)
• Objectives –
• To identify…
• To construct ...
• To evaluate…
• Scope of the project
• Significance of the project
• Outline of Thesis

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Example Of Chapter One In TOC

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 

1.1 Background of Study

1.2 Problem Statement

1.3 Objectives

1.4 Scope

1.5 Significance of Study

1.6 Outline of Thesis

1.7 Summary

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Content For Chapter Two

Tips For Chapter Two

Tips For Chapter Two (Continued…)

Example of Citation

• The definition by John et al. (1994) emphasises feature selection (FS) can improve the prediction accuracy or decrease the size of the structure by selecting a subset of features without significantly decreasing prediction accuracy of the classifier built using only the selected features.
• In contrast, Liu & Yu (2005) defined FS as a process that finds the minimal size features subset from the raw features whereby the ideal size of the feature subset is based on some evaluation criteria. Similarly, Guyon (2008) defined FS as making good predictions with as few features as possible.

Example of Citation (Continued…)

• Feature Selection (FS) and Feature Transformation (FT) are among the pre-processing methods that are commonly used in the literature. Basically, these two methods aim to change the data into a simpler dimension that enables the machine learning (ML) algorithms to learn faster. Usually, ML algorithms would degrade in performance when faced with many features that are not necessary for rule discovery (Jain et al. 2000; Zhong & Dong 2001; Liu et al. 2002; Liu & Yu 2005; Saeys et al. 2007; Luka & Zoran 2010).

Example of Citation (Continued…)

• FS methods have been applied in various fields such as in bioinformatics (Al-Shahib et al. 2005; Hauskrecht et al. 2006; Chuang et al. 2008; Nemati et al. 2009; Unler & Murat 2010), signal processing (Guldogan & Gabbouj 2008; Nemati et al. 2008), text categorisation (Shang et al. 2007; Aghdam et al. 2009), image retrieval (Song et al. 2010), and intruder detection (Mukkamala & Sung 2005).
• KD is defined by Fayyad et al. as a “nontrival process of identifying valid, novel, potentially useful and ultimately understandable patterns in data” (1996: 40) and cited in Vanschoren (2010).

Example Of Chapter Two In TOC

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW 

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Overview of Your Domain / Area

2.3 Specific Description on Your Selected Area

2.4 Techniques in Your Area

2.4.1 Technique A

2.4.2 Technique B

2.4.3 Technique C

2.4.4 Comparisons of Techniques

2.5 Similar Studies

2.5.1 Study 1

2.5.2 Study 2

2.5.3 Study 3

2.5.4 Comparison of Studies

2.6 Summary

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Chapter Three : Research Methodology

• To describe the overall process flow of the research (research framework, research structure)
• To describe the techniques / procedures / steps used in research (steps in developing the algorithm, steps in pre-processing the data, steps in evaluating the system, etc)
• To explain the data, materials, subjects, tools, and equipments used in the research
• To explain how the experiments are designed
• How do you carry out your study?
• How you performed the research?

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Tips For Chapter Three

• Provide enough detail for replication of your work.
• Order procedures chronologically.
• Use past tense to describe what you did.
• Do not mix the results with procedures / steps.

Example Of Chapter Three In TOC

CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Research Design / Framework

3.3 Preliminary Study

3.4 Requirement Analysis

3.5 System Design

3.6 System Development

3.7 Data Analysis

3.8 Summary

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To be continued…