Senior honours projects Report and poster writing

John Loveday

http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/~jsl

Report

Aim to describe all the relevant aspects of the project as succinctly as possible without loosing important details

Demonstrate that you are familiar with all the relevant literature

and understand it!

Demonstrate that you understand the techniques that you are using

Level to be understandable to your colleagues

Four parts

introduction, experimental, results and conclusions

Overall length 15-20 pages of A4 5000-7000 words

Introduction

A description of why the problem you are tackling is interesting and important

A review of other relevant work in the field (Literature survey)

Not just a listing of what work has been done but relevant details of the work

What has been done

What was well done and what not

I have read the literature and written this so that you don’t

All annotated with references to work in Journals or Books (generally do not use internet pages as references)

A short review of the theoretical background relevant to the project

Principles of the experiment

Again referenced

Literature survey

Start from information given to you by your supervisor

You will need to read more widely find other papers

Use search databases like web of knowledge

wok.mimas.ac.uk

Search of keywords, names, years, Journal names

Forward Search on Citations

Back Search on References

Experimental

A description of the experimental procedures

Enough to allow the reader to form a general idea of how the experiment was done. (Very important for people attempting to reproduce your results)

A short description of the apparatus and how it works to show that you are familiar with it

Results

Description of the analysis procedure including error propagation (statistical and systematic)

Some of the mathematical basis but don’t get carried away

Again important for readers wanting to test the results

Results presented graphically wherever possible (no large tables of numbers)

Conclusions

What the results mean

What consequences do they have

What confidence do you have in this

Suggestions for futher work and how the experiments might be improved

References

[1] A.N.Author, A.N.O.Author and A.Waster, J. Improb. Res., Vol, page (year)

Latex

Typesetting language but written specifically for Scientific paper writing

Very simple for equations

Can embed figures

Cross referencing done automatically so figure and reference numbering

Can download references from wok

A latex dummy SH report will go on the website in the next couple of weeks

Poster

Posters are the main way that science is communicated at conferences

100-200 posters up on boards in a room with everyone visiting posters and talking to the authors

Efficient way of presenting and also very effective (one to one communication)

We will have a poster session at the end of semester 2 (Audience will be you and members of academic staff)

Poster II

Poster should be a summary of what is in the report on an A2 sized area (4 sheets of A4 is also OK) (ignore 300 word limit)

It should be visually attractive, you have to persuade people to come and look at it

It should be understandable without you there to explain it (it has to be handed in)

And it should provide something that you can amplify when speaking about it.

Various styles are possible (wordy or lot of pictures and bullet points) look at posters around the school

The winner of this year’s graduate poster prize is a good example

Assessment

30 % for the laboratory work

Assessed by the supervisor (log book part of the hand in)

55 % Report

Assessed by supervisor and second marker

15% Poster (handed in)

Assessed by supervisor and second marker

Poster session is not assessed but there will be a prize for the best poster and a 5% deduction for not attending .