Final report

Writing tips

See Scientific writing tips.

Report structure

The classic way to structure an MSc is a monograph, but I prefer a compendium format. A monograph is written as a single, cohesive, standalone document. A compendium, on the other hand, wraps text around a draft of a conference or journal paper, and includes extra studies after the paper draft if relevant. The structure of each type of thesis is explained below.

Compendium

Compendiums are non-traditional but give the student experience in writing a scientific paper ready for submission. Care must be taken in the introduction to orient the reader as to the structure, and section introductions should be used to tell the story throughout the thesis. Here is an example outline.

  1. Introduction

    1. Motivation. Explain the problem I’m trying to solve.

    2. State-of-the-art. Summarize how people have previously solved the problem. Clearly identify gaps in the state-of-the-art.

    3. Research questions.

    4. Outline of the thesis. Research questions 1 and 2 are answered in the paper draft presented in the next section. Research question 3 is addressed in Section 3.

  2. Evaluation of estimation techniques with rigid tower
    • A few sentences summarizing the objective of the paper. Then the paper itself:

      1. Introduction. Motivation, literature survey, etc.

      2. Methodology. Techniques used in the paper.

      3. Results. Important results and analysis.

      4. Discussion. Important limitations or considerations.

      5. Conclusion. Summary of most important conclusions.

  3. Estimation techniques with flexible tower

    1. Objective. Give a few sentences explaining the point of this study.

    2. Simulation set-up. Key differences from previous section.

    3. Results.

    4. Conclusions. Summarize the key takeaways for this study.

  4. Discussion

    • Summarize any key limitations of the work and potential impact of this technique.

  5. Conclusion

    • Re-state my research questions, now with answers based on my presented work.

    • Final wrap-up of thesis.

Monograph

Here is an example of a monograph report structure. You can change the structure if it better tells your story. See references in Scientific writing tips for more details.

  1. Background. What is the problem you are trying to solve? How have other people solved the problem/related problems? If this is a thesis, what are your research questions based on this?

  2. Methodology. What technique(s) did you use to solve the problem that the reader needs to know?

  3. Results. How well did your technique work? Are there some areas where it doesn’t work well? Why?

  4. Discussion. Summarize the key assumptions, limitations and potential impact of your techniques.

  5. Conclusion. Summarize the problem, proposed solution and results. If this is a thesis, write the answers to your research questions based on your results/analysis.

Examples

At this time, I only have examples of monographs. Links require DTU login. Find more examples on DTU FindIt by doing an advanced search and putting “Rinker” in the supervisor field.