CPE 103 Formal Lab Report Format


According to recent nationwide surveys, engineers and other professionals in the sciences spend at least fifty percent of their time writing reports and memoranda. The quality of oral and written reports presented by working professionals is invariably one of the criteria used by their superiors in performance evaluations, making the ability to write a good, professional-quality report is an essential, marketable skill. For these reasons, training and practice in report writing are important parts of your education.

The laboratory report should always be written for the convenience of the reader. Thus, for example, each section of the report should be headlined and the sections should be arranged in an appropriate, easily-understood sequence. In the context of the course for which it is written, the laboratory report serves to describe what procedures you followed, that observations you made, what data you gathered, and what you conclude as a result. While it may seem logical to you to write a report in a chronological or historical sequence, such an approach is not the most useful for your readers, who would find such a report difficult to scan for the items of interest. Think of the document as a performance document, i.e., proof that you understand what you did and that you can apply it in practical situations.

As in all professional writing, clarity and precision in both language and presentation of data are essential in a laboratory report.

The content of each of the sections in a laboratory report is described in the following pages.

1. Report Header

A brief title that describes the report
Your name
Date(s) the experiment was performed
Names of other group members
Course number and section number

2. Statement of Objective

State the objective(s) of the experiment concisely, in paragraph form. The laboratory manual or instruction sheet will help here. The fact that experiments in laboratory courses are being used to educate students is a secondary objective, and should not be stated in the report. In other words, the objective written in your report should never be to "familiarize students with different data structures." Rather, the objective should state the problem that your procedure and data attempts to answer. Some key verbs that you will use in the objective might include "to investigate," "to plot," "to measure," or "to compare." The section should inform the reader precisely why the project was undertaken.

3. Theory

A concise description of the relevant theory should be provided when the theory is needed to understand other parts of the report, such as the data analysis or discussion sections. This section is sometimes combined with the introduction and background section, if this results in a more readable report. Any relevant equations or formal theory should be introduced.

4. Description of Experimental Setup

List all the equipment used in the experiment. If you used the CSL workstations, simply indicate which room and the computer make and model. If you used your personal computer, provide the make and model. If the experiment involves measures of computer speed or memory usage, provide the processor speed and RAM capacity of the machine used.

5. Procedure

Describe the procedure used to carry out the experiment step-by-step. Sufficient detail should be provided to allow the reader to repeat the experiment in an identical manner.  As with all sections of the report, the procedure describes what was done in the lab and should, therefore, be written in the past tense. Copying the procedure from a lab assignment would be an inaccurate reflection of the work completed in the lab and is not acceptable. Describe the features of any programs you developed. (The source code is placed in the appendix).

6. Data

All the pertinent raw data obtained during the experiment are presented in this section. This section should contain only raw information, not results from manipulation of data. If the latter need to be included in the same table as the raw data in the interests of space or presentation style, the raw data should be identified clearly as such. All numerical data should be tabulated carefully. Variables tabulated or plotted should be clearly identified by a symbol or name. Units, if any, should always be clearly noted. If appropriate you may include computer generated output that results from your experiment.

7. Analysis of Data

If appropriate, this section describes how the raw data was analyzed. The final results of the data analysis are reported in this section, using figures, graphs, tables or other convenient forms. The end result of the data analysis should be information, usually in the form of tables, charts, graphs or other figures that can be used to discuss the outcome of the experiment or project.

Unlike experiments in the physical sciences, computer science experiments often have very little or no manipulation of the data after the experiment. Include this section if you applied any mathematical transformations on the raw data to make it easier to understand and interpret. If you simply converted raw data in milliseconds to seconds, this section is not needed.

8. Discussion of Results

In this section you interpret the outcome of the experiment. The information from the data analysis is examined and explained. You should describe, analyze and explain (not just restate) all your results. This section should answer the question "What do the data tell us?" Compare your results with expected behavior, interpreting the results you obtained compared with the theoretical prediction. Explain any unexpected behavior. If you can't arrive at a reasonable explanation for your results, suggest what parts of the experiment may need to be performed a second time.

9. Conclusions

Base all conclusions on your actual results. Explain the meaning of the experiment and the implications of your results. Examine the outcome in the light of the stated objectives. This section should answer the question "So what?"  Seek to make conclusions in a broader context in the light of the results. If there are any implications for software engineers, discuss your recommendations.

10. Appendix

Include a source code listing of any programs you created, using a monospaced font of size 10-12.


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