Overview

The result section addresses the question “what” and describes what you made (the product) or what you found (results: data). Products could be software, hardware or artefacts. Data could be identified through surveys or experiments. In the results section the results are described. In the discussion section the results are interpreted. Results and discussion sections may be combined. Sometimes this combined section is called Findings. However, the sequence tends to remain the same with the combined section with descriptions preceding interpretations. When reporting results, it is important to report the important results first.

Grouping

Research projects often produce large quantities of data. Consider a project that generates a results table of 200,000 cells. This table contains all the results of the project. But, the table is too large to include in your graduation thesis. There are also too many data points. Readers will find it difficult to understand (and probably stop reading). To make your results easy to understand, try to group similar datapoints together into datasets. For example, from the 200,000 datapoints, we could create three groups: high numbers, low numbers and special cases. It is far easier for you to write up and far easier for the reader to understand.

Approximations

Numerical data is often reported. To help readers understand more quickly, approximations are frequently used to describe data. For example, a result 102/987 is achieved in a simulation. This is approximately 100/1000 which can be simplified to approximately 1/10. Five ways to write this are given below.

• Exactly 102/987
• Approximately one in ten
• Around one out of ten
• Just over 1/10
• Slightly more than a tenth

In a sentence both the exact and approximate figures can be given, e.g.:

• Approximately one in a ten (102/987) trials were XXXXX .

Visuals

Result sections frequently contain visuals. Commonly used visuals include graphs, tables, charts, diagrams, images and screenshots. Each visual is given a number and a title. The title for tables is generally above the table. This is because we usually read tables starting from the top. The title for figures is generally below the figure. This is because figures are often graphs. When we read graphs, we usually check the horizontal axis (x axis) to understand what the graph means. Therefore, we read graphs from the bottom and so the title is below. In Microsoft Word, you can use "insert caption" to add titles for tables and figures. Each visual must be referred to in the text. This is easy to do if each figure and table has a number. Three common ways of referring readers to visuals are given below:

• Fig. 1 shows the XXXXX .
• As shown in Fig. 1, XXXXX .
• XXXXX (See Table. 1).

Extract of results section

However, we found that for all four competitions, there is a consistent and statistically significant pattern in which contestants wearing red win more fights (χ2 = 4.19, d.f.=1, p= 0.041; Fig. 1a). This result is remarkably consistent across rounds in each competition, with 16 of 21 rounds having more red than blue winners, and only four rounds having more blue winners (sign test, p=0.012). The effect is the same across the weight classes in each sport: 19 of 29 classes had more red winners, with only six classes having more blue winners (sign test, p=0.015).

Hill, R. A., & Barton, R.A. (2005, May 19). Red enhances human performance in contests. Nature, 435, p. 293.

Advice on approximation

Approximation means describing numbers or statistics by using a fraction that is similar to the exact number; e.g. using 'about one-third' instead of 34.76%, or an easy-to-remember number such as 'just under one million' instead of '997,652'. There are a number of reasons for doing this. Firstly, it is easier for people to understand and remember. Secondly, the numbers or statistics may be more detailed than necessary.

1. Don't use fractions where the denominator (the number under the line) is greater than 5 - many people do not know that 1/6 = 16% or that  7/8 = 87.5%
2. Don't forget the hyphen in fractions; e.g. 'one-third' (but not after 'a'; e.g. use 'a third')
3. Don't forget to add an 's' on the end of fractions starting with two or greater; e.g. 'two-thirds', 'three-quarters'
4. Most fractions can be followed by the preposition 'of '; e.g. 'Three-quarters of the staff were satisfied with working conditions.'
5. Most fractions are followed by a plural noun; e.g. 'half of the books', except uncountable nouns
6. In strictly correct grammar use 'fewer than' for countable nouns and 'less than' for uncountable nouns
7. It is more natural to use 'a' instead of 'one' in front of fractions; e.g. 'a third of ...'
8. In front of 'half ' you do not need to use 'a' or 'one-'; e.g. 'Half of the staff were satisfied with their working relationships.'
9. Do not use a number at the start of a sentence, because it's bad style. Use words; e.g. 'One hundred of the staff were satisfied with working conditions.'
10. Be careful of the spelling of 'several' - it's not 'serveral'
11. Remember that 'only' and 'just' often have a negative meanings, so use them only if you want to show that something is bad; e.g. 'Only 1% of our staff were satisfied with working conditions.'