Lab Reports and University

The purpose In my opinion… ​ of the Lab report is not only for the teaching team to check your understanding of the material but also for you to consolidate your learning and also practice organizing your thoughts on paper (or digital paper…) in a structured way.

You need to get used to writing. Lab reports, and by extension, academic writing, are the bread and butter of the academic world, even for an undergraduate.

For CG1111A, my guiding principle for your lab reports is:

The Lab report should be presented in a readable and clear manner

Unlike what you may have experienced in pre-university education, this course is quite flexible in terms of formatting. No prose format, editor or font are dictated. All these are a matter of your personal preference and discretion.

Generally, a graded lab report written using comic sans that is clear and understandable will score better than a nice LaTeX document that does not answer the question.

Of course, for professionalism’s sake please refrain from writing your reports using comic sans….

But, knowing how kiasu and worrisome students tend to be here at NUS, I will provide a suggested format to get you started.

Remember, as (software/firmware/hardware/…) engineers, we are writers. Yes, really!

We write code, documentation and countless other technical documents. The contexts that these documents are being read in should determine their style and format. Take university as an opportunity to develop your writing skills¹. These pay dividends later on in your career & internships.

Suggestions

Before you read my suggestions, this is a final reminder to read the official guidelines under files/admin/Guidelines for Graded Studios.pdf. These suggestions I am giving are supplementary to the official guidelines.

My following suggestions for formatting assume that you are using a digital document editor. I make this distinction because we historically have students submitting pdf scans of work done on paper.

I will give suggestions on two areas. First, Document Formatting. Second, on useful principles of writing your lab report.

1. Document formatting

Text Editor

I prefer to use Google docs to write my reports. It is cross-OS compatible and useful for courses where reports are done in group-level. This is up to you though. Whatever works for you (notion, word, latex) which can be converted to pdf will work.

Font matters

Any professional, readable font that is in the size range of 12 to 20, whichever is most appropriate.

Stock fonts like Arial and Calibri will suffice.

Filename

For most NUS courses, the submission filename will be dictated by the lecturer. Follow that.

In the context of CG1111A this semester, the naming format is as such:

• YourName_date.pdf

You should know this since its under the official guidelines. If you don’t, please read it again.

Not all courses may be as prescriptive as CG1111A in naming convention. If you find that there’s no format available, rule of thumb is that your filename should contain important identifying information that allows whoever that has your document know who you are and what this is for. I will provide a minimal example. Add/omit information based on context.

Sample filename: <course_code>-<title>-<matric>
Example: CG5111B-Lab_10-AXXXXXXX

Prefer PDF

You will notice that most courses (including CG1111A) will require you to submit stuff in pdf format. This prevents people from accidentally overwriting your content, and makes documents pretty.

This is a good time to find a good pdf tool to do things like splicing and adding pages to your report. It’s not necessarily needed for CG1111A, but other courses may require this functionality.

Prefer digital over hardcopy

For CG1111A, I DO NOT recommend scanning hardcopy pieces of paper and submitting them for graded labs. This is to avoid legibility issues and allow ease of annotation by the teaching team. As an added bonus, you save some trees from being chopped.

2. Principles for a better Lab Report

Principle: Be explicit 🎯

Be explicit – as in be very clear and leave no doubt to the reader.

One way to do this in your lab reports is to copy over the lab handout’s question/task and then answer them.

For example, you may find the following question in your handout:

11. How does the output waveform vary with the change in the reference voltage?

You can be explicit by quoting the serial number in your report…

11. The waveform…

…or by doing it in a QnA format.

11. How does the output waveform vary with the change in the reference voltage?
    Answer: The waveform…

The benefit of doing this is that you can easily reference the lab handout to your report. This reduces the chance of you missing out things and makes things very clear to the reader.

I personally use the 3rd format, and put the answer in a box (table) so that it is very clear where the reader should be looking and I know where to write my stuff.

Principle: Be chronological ⌚

When you structure your document, please answer the questions chronologically.

If you do not answer in order, you run the risk of missing out questions AND having the marker miss out on your answers!

Principle: Be logical

This is a little tongue-in-cheek, but the idea is that:

• Cause and effect
• Reason and explanation

For your lab reports and answers should be clear and explicit. Well, duh. Why is this a thing?

I have seen many students (I am guilty of this too at times) simply state assertions, properties and theorems without engaging with the question. This will very likely NOT earn you marks.

This happens especially for more technical questions of the “why” type. My observation is that we students tend to default to word vomitting and hoping keywords stick when we don’t know how to properly answer the question.

So, this is a reminder for you to check your answers to see if they engage with the question. If you really cannot answer the question directly with a ‘cause and effect’ or ‘reason and explanation’ format, it MAY hint at a lack of understanding of the course material. If so, you may want to seek further clarification or help.

Extra tips

I observe that many students (including myself) ‘forget’ to answer parts of the handout and lose precious marks.

To avoid this, pre-prepare your report template 1 day earlier. If possible, do the theoretical stuff first (like proving questions). These will help you be more mentally prepared for the lab and allow you to clear doubts fast.

Imporantly, note down all the questions in the report that need to be answered, so that on the actual lab day you know exactly what to write and focus on. When you are busy debugging your circuits, you are unlikely to have the bandwidth to scan through your handout properly.

Going further with TeX

This section is for those willing to push themselves further as Engineers and Academics, and a little reward for my students who read this far in.

I suggest taking 3 mins to learn TeX syntax (its very simple) and use it in your mathematical proofs and formulae in your lab report.

TeX is used by the scientific community, and it’s what makes math look like… math. What do I mean? The following resistance sum equation is written using TeX:

$R_{\text{eff}} = (\frac{1}{R_1}+\frac{1}{R_2}+…)^{-1}$

Here’s a succinct cheatsheet for TeX.

Don’t worry, it’s nowhere as complicated as learning vim commands.

There are 3 practical reasons why TeX will help you in the long run for University (and for CG1111A).

1. It’s everywhere

You don’t need to install any special software (like LaTeX) to use TeX!

TeX is already built into the editors you already use, like Microsoft Word, Notion and Google Docs.

2. Readability

Compare these two ways we can write the quadratic formula.

Exhibit A:

x = [-b +/- (b^2-4ac)^1/2] / 2a

Exhibit B:

$x = \frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2 -4ac}}{2a}$

One is easier + familiar to read compared to the other, and leaves little room for ambiguity for both the writer and reader. You look professional and prevent costly mistakes.

3. Expressive

Using TeX allows you to easily type out meaningful symbols like $\sum\limits_{n=1}^{k}$ rather than having to hack out something else equivalent. You save lots of time.

TeX Bootstrap

Refer to the cheatsheet I linked above. If you’re lazy, to get you started, these are three TeX syntax that you will find useful for CG1111A:

Fractions: \frac{1}{2} will render as $\frac{1}{2}$

Roots: \sqrt[n]{b^2-4ac} will render as $\sqrt[n]{b^2-4ac}$

Subscripts: V_T = V_1 + V_2 + I_aR_a will render as $V_T = V_1 + V_2 + I_aR_a$

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1. You will be writing a lot anyway… ↩︎