Lab Reports for CS 2400 (Hasker's Section)

The basic goal of a lab report is to establish three things:

  1. The hypothesis being tested
  2. The methodology for testing this hypothesis
  3. The results
Lab reports for this class need not be extensive, but must cover each of these. Think in terms of a broader scientific context: testing whether a particular piece of code works is not the sort of hypothesis that would be interesting.

For Lab 6, you will propose a hypothesis and present evidence for it; you will unlikely be in a position to evaluate it formally. But do carefully document your evidence, including showing results from runs. (And when you do show results, ensure that they have a font size that is similar to other text; be careful to crop out large amounts of white space in screenshots because that whitespace often forces text to be very small.) When including results from runs, be sure the version of the system (such as the version before I added feature XYZ) and the inputs are clearly described.

Lab reports will be graded for spelling, grammar, and conciseness. These are important when presenting results. Poor spelling and grammar casts doubt on the quality of the work, and being overly verbose can suggest you are attempting to substitute quantity for quality. Present your work fully, but do not include material that does not directly contribute to understanding that work.

Conclude with a paragraph summarizing results: reviewing the hypothesis, outlining the methodology, and your results. You might also consider discussing possible future work.

Data from Human Subjects

For this course, it is expected that all data would be from publicly-available repositories or randomly generated. If the data is from a public source, be sure to site that source in your report. Do not use data that you collect from people unless you confirm your methodology with your instructor.