A guide FYP report writing (KH Wong, ver. 6.4)

Term 1 report: It should contain -- Introduction, background, theory and your proposal method as discussed below. The section “Implementation and experimental result” is depending on your progress. Please also include a scheduletime table of your plan for the next term at the end of the report.

Term 2 final report:It is a complete report describing what you have done in term1 and term2. You may include some content of what you submitted in your term 1 report.

Title page

Abstract:

  • About 100 words, this summarizes the whole report – from Introduction to Conclusion. Since in some research document databases the reader can only access theabstract but not the rest of the report, so the purpose is to give the reader a brief summary of what you have done in this project.
  • You may rephrase some contents used in the introduction and conclusion here.
  • Abstract is an independent passage, it has no chapter index.
  1. Introduction:

This is the real beginning of your report. Since theabstract only presents a brief summary for readers, therefore you may rephrase what you have written in the abstract here.

An introduction can be a chapter containing theanswers of the following step-by-step questions:

  • What is the problem you want to solve? (Problem definition)
  • Why the problem is important? (Motivation)
  • What are the previous solutions by yourselves or others? (Review, include cross references)
  • What have you achieved in this project? And how good the result is compared with other approaches? (Contribution)
  • What is the structure of this report? (Content of the report: e.g. Chapter 3 is the description of the theory and design etc.)
  1. Background
  2. Write about what others have done in the past.
  3. Write about what you have done in the past.
  4. Use present tense for others’published work, because after they published they are treated as truth. However if you specially refer to a paper at a certain date, you may use past tense. For example, “Prof. Cook proposed an algorithm on super-resolution in a paper in IEEE-PAMI Sept. 1993”.
  1. Theory
  2. Overview: describe the architecture and overview of your project. Use flowcharts and block diagrams for better presentation.
  3. Always remember to tell readers what is the input of your system (e.g. image features, IR sensor inputs etc.), and what is the output (e.g. model, pose, motor speed, output voltage etc).
  1. Circuits: Block diagrams are preferable, detailed circuits should be placed in theappendix. Explain the operationsof the circuit and explain whysuch circuits arenecessary.
  1. Software: Describe the algorithmsby using flow diagrams or pseudo code, explain why these algorithms are necessary. Insert screenshots of your GUI designs if possible. Source code maybe placed in the appendix if necessary.
  1. Implementation and experimental result:
  • Implementation: State the procedures of the experiments (past tense) describe how the experiments were performed.
  • Experimental result: (Formally you should use past tense, but it is acceptable and now fashionable to use present tensefor this part)
  • Use tables or graphs:For example, for a temperature control system, you can plot a graph showing the temperature change against time.
  • Use quantitative values (e.g. 25.3 cm, 4.5 mph) and avoid using qualitativedescription to describe results (e.g. large, small, heavy etc).
  • Answer the followingquestions:
  • Does the result match your expectation?
  • What have you learned from the result obtained?
  1. Discussions
  1. Expectations: Can you obtain the expected results?
  2. Discussion of the results in the section of “implementation and experimental results”.
  3. Difficulties, limitations.
  4. Others: e.g. trade-off of the system (like memory-time trade-off), cost of production (is the design suitable for mass production)……
  5. Further improvement.
  1. Conclusion

Stateclearly what you have achieved in this project.

  • What is the problem you want to solve? (problem definition)
  • What have you achieved in this project? And how good the result is compared with other approaches? (contribution)
  1. References (No section index; may use web links as references, use to double check the spelling of the names of authors and titles)
  2. Schedule time table (for term 1 report only): a time listing you plan for the next term.
  3. Appendix (optional)
  4. After the submission of your report to thedepartment, prepare a CD with all your code, report and PowerPoint files in different directories for me.