Hi there.
Let’s talk writing!
There are more texts in the world than anyone
could ever read.
We have fairy tales, and newspaper articles.
Love letters or perhaps tweets.
Contracts advertisements dictionaries...
And of course, Scientific reports like yours.
Each text has its own purpose and its own
audience.
The purpose of a text might be to entertain,
describe, inform, or persuade.
And there are many more possibilities.
The audience for a given text could consist
of children, or random passersby, or maybe scientists.
Ok, let’s think about the reports you will
be writing.
The purpose of your report is to persuade your fellow students - your audience - of the research you've done.
What problem have you researched?
What kind of mathematical model did you use
and why?
What did you calculate using your model, and
how did you do this?
And finally, what conclusions did you draw?
And how did you validate these results?
Did you repeat the modeling cycle?
After reading your report, your peers should
understand your research and believe your results!
To convince your peers, they need to actually
read your report.
So, the first step is making it accessible
and pleasant to read.
We will do some exercises on how to use lay-out
and structure to guide your readers through your report.
It should be very clear what problem you have
studied, why this is of interest,
and how your research solves this problem.
The second step is to provide the reader with all the necessary information
to be able to duplicate your research.
This is the gold standard of scientific reporting:
your reader should be able to independently verify
or falsify your results.
After reading your report, your reader should
not be left with any questions:
Where did this balance equation suddenly come from?
Why does the author only look at stable equilibrium
solutions?
As a third step: give credit where credit
is due.
In scientific research, you tell your readers
which results of others you are using.
And you give your readers the tools to do
further background reading when convenient.
In the exercises on referencing you will learn
when and how to refer correctly.
All that is left to do, is to keep your fellow
students in mind when writing the report.
Choose your language appropriately.
We’ll work on this in the exercises as well.
If your report is targeted to the right audience,
accessible to the reader,
provides the reader with all necessary information and gives credit where it’s due,
you should be able to convince your peers of your conclusions.
Let’s get writing!
