Report Writing

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 Dr. Tanvir Mohammad Hayder Arif
An Academic, Trainer, and Talent Management Coach
Ph.D. (Entrepreneurial Finance), MBA & BBA (Finance, CU)
MSc. International Business Management (UK) ;
Professor of International Business Management and Finance, University of Chittagong
Ex-Assistant Professor, USTC; Ex-Lecturer AUB; Ex-Regional Head, NITOL-TATA Group
Associate Editor: International Journal of Management and Accounting, Universe PG Publications Group.
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An Academic & Trainer of
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Email: tanvir.arif@cu.ac.bd Mob. +8801715-174403
 What is a report?

An orderly and objective communication of

factual information that serves a business
purpose.
 How to Write a Good Report

• What makes a good report?

• Clarity and Structure
• Technical Issues
• Further reading
• Conclusions
 Determine the Report Purpose

• Conduct a preliminary investigation

– Gather facts to better understand the problem
– Consult many sources
• State the problem in writing
– To serve as a record
– To allow others to review it
– To force yourself to get the problem clearly in
mind
 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
– Objectives
– 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 ...
 Objectives

• 1. Main Objective
• 2. Specific Objectives
 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

 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!!
 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
 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.
For More: Please See APA Referencing
System.
 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!
 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
 Tables
• Always label and give a caption over the
table

• Be aware of rules for good tables:

– 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”

• 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
 Conclusions

• Structure is vital
• Write clearly
• Good clear simple illustrations
• Spellcheck and proofread
• Reference all material used or quoted