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Chapter 3.

Results
Here you present your results from your work. This could be a set of measurements from
laboratory experiments, measurements from field tests, responses from questionnaires.
In the case of a literature-based discussion, you would not have a 'Results' chapter but
more likely a 'Review' chapter containing the compilation of all the facts from your literature
search which you are going to use in the discussion.
Where you have used very different methodologies, for example measurements and
questionnaires, it may be better to have several results chapters, one chapter for each
approach. Similarly, if the work is based on very different activities of experiments (e.g.
testing a component and testing an assembled device), it might be better to have several
results sections.
In the case of quantitative laboratory or field data, you are expected to generate figures
with meaningful and clear graphs. The actual results must be described in the text, using
complete paragraphs and sentences. In that text, you would explicitly refer to the relevant
figures, describe what is shown in the figure, point out which particular features of the
figures correspond to something relevant to your topic, and describe how the reader is to
understand the figure.
You are also expected to present relevant statistics, such as the mean of a quantity (where
it is meaningful) together with its standard deviation, or the results of a regression analysis
(including the values of the regression coefficients, their uncertainty, and the overall
correlation coefficient), or the results of a statistical test (e.g. a T-test, a 2 test, or a
Principal Component Analysis.)
When you present data, think carefully whether it will be easier to understand if you results
as a table or as a figure. In most cases, a figure shows clearer the point you are trying to
make, whereas the table would give the reader the opportunity to check your description of
the results and also carry out some further analysis themselves. I personally would almost
always recommend to show data preferentially as figures in the main document and list the
data as tables in an Appendix but this is only a general guideline, and each choice of
graph or table must be decided on its own merit.
Avoid to provide too much interpretation of the data this is reserved for the following
chapter, Discussion.
At the end of the Results chapter, you should provide a brief summary of the main results.
This is particularly important if you have several Results chapters. So you should have a
summary at the end of each Results chapter.

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