Report Guidelines

A few words about reports...

You should write your report pretending that it is for your boss or a preparation for a scientific paper, and not a ‘homework’ assignment.

Your report should contain (at least):

• your Name and a Date on it
• the Scientific Purpose of the analysis should be stated
• a brief Description of the data should be given
• the Analyses should be described, make sure to clearly state any assumptions you
  make in the analyses
• the Results should be given
• there should be some Interpretations and Conclusions

The report should not contain the R commands you used (unless I specifically ask for it, and in that case it should be given in an appendix at the end of the report), and should also not contain every bit of output you produced but rather a summary of the relevant bits.

I can guarantee that it will be impossible to get a 6 if you cannot write a report of sufficiently high quality – no matter how many plots you include or how much data you analyze. Communicating your findings is part of the job of a scientist and statistician, and that is what you all are!

Your report can be in English or in French, and should be written in a clear, simple to understand manner. You should email your report to me (darlene.goldstein at epfl.ch) by the deadline so that I have time to return it to you in the following class. Your report should be a pdf file, and I will also as for your .tex or .Rnw files (more on this later).

Here are some web sites that give more detailed information that you might find useful. Note that this does not mean that I require you to do exactly as these say.

http://www.rpi.edu/dept/llc/writecenter/web/labs.html

http://www.ecf.utoronto.ca/~writing/handbook-lab.html

Happy writing!