Hello, my name is Julia Diederer. I'm a teacher from the Laboratory of Food Chemistry at Wageningen University. In your lab report, thesis or internship report, you always have a results and discussion section.
This is one of the most important sections in your report. In this knowledge clip, I would like to share with you the general rules for this results and discussion section. This also includes some rules about figures and tables. Let's start with looking at the general setup of your report. In the knowledge clip How to write a report this setup was discussed in detail, except for the section Results and Discussion.
As you can see the Results and Discussion section comes after the Materials and Methods section and is followed by the Conclusion section. Here you see an example of the setup of a report. In this example the results and discussion section is divided up into subsections. For every subsection you first give a short introduction, then you give the results for this subsection and then you discuss these results. For every subsection you should repeat this order.
Very important is that you do not separate the results from the discussion. so do not first give all the results, after which you start discussing your results. Also, often results from different analysis can be combined and described in one logical subsection.
So often, not every analysis needs its own subsection. So, as said before, each subsection in results and discussion has a general structure. First you introduce your results with some text. Then you give the results, often by using figures or tables.
And finally you start discussing the results. You should discuss these data in the perspective of the experiment and also in the perspective of the existing literature. I will now explain in detail the general rules for these three items. In each subsection you want to give the results of some experiments and then discuss these results, but You can never start a subsection with for example giving a table. You always first have to write a short introduction to this table.
Before you can show it, then you have to introduce it. So this introduction text is often just one or two sentences. So you have to describe from which experiments the results come from, and you have to describe the starting material, if this is appropriate. Also in this short introduction you shortly describe the data that is shown in the figures and the tables, and you point out to the main results in the figure and the table, and if relevant you even repeat some numbers in your text.
Always refer to figures and tables by mentioning the figure number or the table number. Here you see an example of a figure with some introducing text. There are two mistakes.
First of all, the order is wrong. The introduction to the figure is here given after the figure was introduced. The introduction to the figure should come before the figure is introduced.
Secondly, the text says, as shown in the figure above. Here the writer should have referred to the figure by the number, so saying figure 1. In other words this introduction is not correct. Here you see the example of a correct introduction.
So here you see that the writer of this piece of resultant discussion first introduced the figure, and then the figure is given. Also the writer of this piece of introduction referred to the figure by giving the figure number. Also in this short introduction you can see that the writer gives some main results with giving some actual values.
This helps the reader to point to the main important results in the figure. So in other words this is a correct way to introduce the figure. After the short introduction now you can give the results. In general, when possible, you should give the results in tables or in figures.
Make sure you show the same results only once. You have to choose between a table or a figure. Very often you can combine results of different analysis into one figure or one table. This saves space and it makes it easier to compare results. I will now explain some rules for tables and figures.
Okay, starting with the rules for tables. Here you see an example of a table. As you can see, the writer has put the caption above the table. Also, if you read the caption, the caption explains in detail what the table is about, so what you can find in the table. Also in the table you should only give relevant results.
In this case the researcher has measured the oxygen concentration several times, but only the average oxygen concentration is given and the standard deviation. So instead of giving all the different measured oxygen concentration, he gives the average and the standard. Here the writer has used a superscript A and B and it's very important that you explain this superscript but you should do this underneath the table as you see here below.
And then two more important rules is that you should never put calculations in your table. use the appendix if you want to explain the calculation, and also make sure that you do not put too many significant numbers in your table. In other words, the table that you're looking at now is a very correct table. Here you see an example of a common mistake in a table.
Here the writer has given all the raw data of the experiment and the calculation. to come to the final concentration of the phenol in the different sample. So you should not give the raw data and the calculations, they're not relevant to the reader.
Only the last column here is relevant information. In other words this is not a correct table. Here are some more examples of tables. You see three tables, table 1, table 2, table 3. And if I look at, for example, the headings of the tables, these captions, then you see that the description of the caption is very short. It only says water activity.
This is too short. Now the reader doesn't know what this table actually is about. Also, what you see is that this writer has made three different tables. It takes up a lot of space, and you're repeating the same information every time. So you're repeating.
fresh mango, mango jam, commercial jam, three times. In other words, this is not how you should do it. Do not make three separate tables with only a little bit of information. A better option is to combine these three tables into one.
It saves space and also it makes it much more easy for the reader to compare these results with each other. Also you can see now that the caption that is given here is much more complete. So now you can read the table, understand the table, without reading the text.
In other words, this is a correct way of giving a table. Now that I have explained some rules for tables, I would also like to continue now with the rules for figures. Pictures, graphs, structures, etc. are all called figures.
Now for figure counts that the caption should be below the figure. So this is opposite from tables, since for tables the caption is above. Just like for tables, the caption should hold all the information that you need to understand the figure.
Here you see a figure of vitamin C and the writer has put the caption above the figure. This is not correct. You should not put it above.
And also the explanation vitamin C is quite short. A better way is this. First of all the caption should be below the picture and also the explanation, the caption here, is much more explanatory.
So now you know it's the molecular structure of vitamin C. In other words this is a correct way of giving a figure. Graphs are in general the most common used figure type in your reports. Here are some rules for graphs.
Graphs consist of an x-axis and a y-axis. To make a graph you will often use a scatter plot. Make sure that you label both axes by giving the name of the variable and the unit. Also if you have measured replicates, make sure that you show this in your graph. And finally, if you have more than one curve in your graph, you need a legend.
This legend is often placed in the caption, in the title of the graph. Now let's have a look at some graphs. Here you see a graph with a few mistakes.
The first mistake I see is that there is a caption above the figure, and there shouldn't be any caption. There is also a caption below the figure. So actually there are two captions, which is very unnecessary. The caption below, which is the right, place but it's not detailed enough. It just says texture analyze of results one.
I don't know what results one is so it's not explanatory enough. Another maybe small mistake is that here the legend is put next to the graph instead of putting the legend into the caption what is actually should be done. In other words this is not a really nice figure.
Also when looking at the colors, if I would print out this report in black and white, it becomes really hard for me to see which line is which color. So color is not always the best option to make different lines. And also the gray background area is not the best option to choose often.
Here is another example of a graph. This is an example of a correct graph. For example here the name of the variable and the unit is given for the x-axis and also for the y-axis here, storage time and then in days.
You should do that. Also the caption is complete here and it's below the graph where it should be. So in other words this is a really nice figure.
Also you can see the different data points using different symbols. So when I print this out in black and white it is still very easy for me to understand which line belongs to which results. Now after introducing the results and giving the results in a figure or table you are now ready to start discussing the results in your report. Here you see an example of a part of the discussion on ascorbic acid in orange juice. There are some general rules for the discussion.
First you should discuss did you expect these findings? And you should compare, if possible, with literature. Here the writer did that.
He's writing about that it is consistent with evidence from other investigators. So he's comparing with literature. Secondly, you should in your discussion see if you can explain or scientifically explain your results.
In this case the writer is saying that this result can be largely attributed to the oxygen that is dissolved in the juice. So the writer is trying to explain the results. And then lastly, when possible, try to make a link between different results.
So is the result from analysis A, is that inconsistent? consistent with the result from analysis B. Also here the writer is doing that.
He is talking about figure 2 and 3 and it says that it coincides with the consumption of the dissolved oxygen that you can see in table 1 and 1a and 1b. So he's really comparing results with each other. Finally I have some short hints for writing the discussion or actually writing in general.
So as you can see here, I have a few words, and very often people use two words instead, while actually one word would be enough. If I look at all these words, double words, then I can take away all these double words and make single words and still say the same thing. For example, the color red, you can just say, it turned red.
And you don't have to say repeat again. You can just say, It repeats or different alternatives. Alternatives are always different.
So make sure that you tighten your writing. Also, very often students write unnecessary sentences. For example, of course experiments were not performed just for fun. This may be a very obvious sentence that does not make sense, but really, after writing a piece of material, read your text again and you'll see that you made a lot of sentences that actually don't really contribute to your story.
So maybe a general rule that I can give you is this, that the art of writing is leaving out all unnecessary words or even unnecessary sentences. So, I've come to the end of this knowledge clip. I would like to remind you that the rules that I talked about are general rules. Requirements can be different between courses or even different between teachers. So, check for your report what the requirements are.
And secondly, remember writing is very important. but also a very difficult skill. The only way to learn this skill is by practicing.
So good luck with making your results in discussion section.