Chapter 4

Writing Research Papers and

Making Presentations
 4.1 Tables, Figures, and Equations

• In technical report writing, each figure and table

must be numbered separately and labeled.
• Don’t use a full stop at the end of a label.
• The table/figure is numbered using section number, a full
stop, and serial number, such as 2.1, 3.4, etc. That means
the numbering is reset for every chapter.
• The labels should be informative.
• Use a font style for labels that is different from the body
text which may vary depending on the taste of the author.
• Pick a style that you think is best from books or papers.

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 4.1 Tables, Figures, and Equations
• For equations, start from 1 and continue numbering throughout the
report.
• Use normal brackets and put the equation number right justified in front
of the equation.
• Don’t use square brackets since it will be confused with citations.
• After an equation, use a “where” clause and state what each of the
components (variables, constants, etc.) of the equation are (or stand for).
• The following is an example of using an equation.

(1)
–where µ is the population mean, N is the number of elements of the
population, and Xi are observed values of elements of the population.

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 4.1 Tables, Figures, and Equations
• A table, a figure or an equation that is taken from a different source
requires a citation. Put the citation in the body of the report when the
figure, the table or the equation is referred and not on the labels.
• Alternatively, the source can be indicated at the bottom of the table or
the figure separate from the label as a caption.
• This will also have an advantage of not including the citation in the “List
of Tables” or “List of Figures” section since they are automatically
generated. See the following example on citations of tables from a
different source (which also applies for figures).
• The following are examples on how to refer to tables and figures.
 Table 5.1 [23] shows so and so. or As shown in Table 5.1 [23], [put here any
conclusions].
 Figure 5.1 shows so and so. or As shown in Figure 5.1, [put here any
conclusions].
 Note: The first letter of the terms “Figure and “Table” has to be in
capital letter even when used at the middle of a sentence.
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 4.1 Tables, Figures, and Equations
• The position of labels must be below the figure for figures and for tables
above the table and both must be centered.
• Figures and tables must also be centered.
• Keep the label on the same page as the figure or table.
• Each figure and table must be referred in the body of the report at least
once.
• Remember that the reader will check tables and figures only when they
are referred.
• Tables and Figures can appear before or after they are referred but
should not be far away from their first referencing.

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 4.1 Tables, Figures, and Equations
• Some word processors are not controllable and may insert a table or a
figure anywhere before or after the referencing.
• Hence, don’t make references to tables and figures using words such as
“above” or “below”.
• Don’t refer to figures and tables as “… as shown in the following/above
table/figure …”.
• Instead explicitly refer to the table/figure using their numbers as “… as
shown in Table/Figure 3.1 …”.
• The above discussion also applies for equations.

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 4.1 Tables, Figures, and Equations
• Overcrowding tables with lines should be avoided.
• Horizontal lines should be included only for the heading and at the end
of the table.
• If there is no row of totals or something similar, use only a single line for
the bottom of the last row.
• The following examples demonstrate the various issues discussed so far.
If a table spans more than one page “Repeat Heading Rows”.
–Table 5.1: List of Courses to be offered in the first Semester
Course Code Course Title Credit Hours

COSC 601 Research Methodology 3

COSC 664 Advanced Computer Networks 4

COSC 621 Computer Vision and Image Processing 4

Total 11 11 7
 4.1 Tables, Figures, and Equations
–Table 5.2: Nationally set Annual intake Targets from 2001 to 2005

Year 2001 2002 2003 2003 2005

Intake
Annual Intake 6, 000 9,000 11,000 11,000 11,000
- ICT
Annual Intake 90,000 110,000 110,000 110,000 110,000
- All
% ICT Intake 6.67 8.18 10 10 10

– Figure 5.1: Emblem of AU

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 4.1 Tables, Figures, and Equations
• Tables and figures must not extend beyond the margins.
• It is a common mistake to insert figures that are generated by a software
(which is usually the case in simulation experiments) without knowing
how they are interpreted. This has to be avoided.
• Use only those figures for which proper interpretation can be made.
• Overcrowding the report with so many figures and tables is not
recommended.
• Use few of them in the report and the rest can be included as annexes.
• If figures obtained from other sources do not print well, try to draw
them yourselves if possible. This also applies to tables and equations.
• Tables are used if there are more than two rows and columns. If a table
contains very few entries, it is better to avoid using it and present the
information in textual form.

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 4.1 Tables, Figures, and Equations
• If you create a figure such as a line graph to represent quantitative
values, properly label the X- and Y-axes.
• Don’t use titles in such figures since they will be similar to the figure
labels and become redundant.
• Use proper charts and graphs.
• For instance, use line graphs to show trend, i.e., whether a dependent
variable will increase or decrease as the independent variable increases
or decreases.

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 4.2 Reference and Citations
• Different authors use different styles for citation. The commonly used
style in the Science and Engineering fields is the one by the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) where:
 a citation number is enclosed within square brackets and the
reference list is arranged by the order of citation in the report,
not by alphabetical order.
 Every reference cited in the text must appear in the reference
list (usually titled “References”).
 By the same token, all entries in the reference list must have
been cited in the text at least once.
 The following are examples of citations.
– The above sentence may be true as pointed out in [2].

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 4.2 Reference and Citations
• Note: If the citation is at the end of a sentence, the full stop appears after
the closing square bracket.
•Rabinovich and Spatscheck [1] concluded that …
•As presented in Sen et al. [4], a mobile entity is … (Use et al. if the authors are
more than two).
• Note: that “et al.” is a scholarly abbreviation of the Latin phrase et alia,
which means “and others.” It is commonly used when one doesn’t want
to name all the people or things in a list, and works in roughly the same
way as “etc.”
• Note: et al. can not be used in the “References” section. Instead list all
authors since it is an acknowledgement of their co-authorship.

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 4.2 Reference and Citations
• The authors in [6] argue that …
 Note: it is recommended to use the word “author” instead of other
alternatives such as “scholar”, “researcher”, “academician”, etc.
– Abebe Tesfaye[5] pointed out that …
• Use family name for non-Ethiopian authors and full name for Ethiopian
authors, as shown in the previous examples.
• Don’t use “he” or “she” to refer to an author even if you know the sex of
the author (which can mostly be inferred from the name for Ethiopian
authors). However, it is not always possible to infer the sex of the author
from the name.
• Instead, use terms such as “the author”.
• Don’t use the title of authors such as “Dr.”, “Professor”.

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 4.2 Reference and Citations
• Don’t mention names of people who provided information; but a list of
interviewees may be included at the end of the report or can be
acknowledged in the acknowledgement page.
• Don’t put too many references at once such as [2, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 33,
43] since it will be difficult for the reader to find out which information
is taken from which source.
• Unless there are exceptional cases, don’t use more than three references
at once.
• When there are more than one reference, write them in ascending order
and within 2 square brackets such as [3, 6, 10] and not as [10, 3, 6] or
[3], [6], [10].
• Use a single space after the comma.

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 4.2 Reference and Citations
• References must be listed in the “References” section in the order they
are used in the report.
• All factual information shall be verified with referencing.
• However, referencing should not be an excuse for not defending a
referred idea.
• You have to include ideas only if you are convinced that it is correct and
that you can defend it.
• Try to use recent references.
• For instance, the following doesn’t make sense.
–“Ethiopia is a large country with a population of 74 million [8]”.
• The above sentence may be true at the time reference [8] is written but
doesn’t hold true in 2015, the year the report is written.
• In such cases either search for recent information or clearly indicate the
date of the reference.
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 4.2 Reference and Citations

• References have two major objectives.

• Firstly, the report author is acknowledging the works of others thereby
avoiding plagiarism.
• Secondly, readers who need more information can access the referred
material. Hence, all references must be traceable.
• Formats vary, but an entry for a book usually contains the following
information to be traceable:
–‐ author(s)
–‐ title
–‐ publisher
–‐ date of publication

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 4.2 Reference and Citations
• An entry for a journal or a conference proceeding paper usually
contains:
–‐ author(s)
–‐ article title
–‐ journal title or conference details
–‐ volume and number
–‐ pages on which the paper is printed in the journal or conference
proceeding
–‐ date of publication

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 4.2 Reference and Citations
• The following are example styles for a book, a journal paper, a
conference proceeding, and a Web reference, respectively.
• Please note the double quotes, italicization and how Vol., No., and pp.
are written.
• Also use indent as shown in the following examples.
– [1] J. Watkinson, The MPEG Handbook, Focal Press, Oxford, 2001.

– [2] R. J. Flynn and W. H. Tetzlaff, “Multimedia - An Introduction,” IBM Journal of

Research and Development, Vol. 42, No. 2, 1998, pp. 165-176.

– [3] C.-H. Chi, Y. Cao, and T. Luo, “Scalable Multimedia Content Delivery on
Internet,” in Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia,
Lusanne, Switzerland, August 2002.

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 4.2 Reference and Citations
• For information obtained from the Web, include the URL and the date
when the site was last accessed.
• The word processor may underline or color such sources to show that it
is a link for quick navigation.
• Please delete the link so that it will not be underlined or colored.
• The following is an example of a reference from the Web.
– [4] Zona Research, “The Economic Impacts of Unacceptable Web Site Download
Speeds,” white paper, 1999, retrieved from http://also.co.uk/docs/speed.pdf, Last
accessed on June 10, 2014.

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 4.2 Reference and Citations
• As much as possible avoid using Web sources that are not peer-
reviewed such as Wikipedia as justifications of arguments.
• Such sources may be good for understanding ideas but are not peer-
reviewed and hence some of the information may be “own” view of
the author(s) which is sometimes controversial.
• If a BSc/masters thesis or a PhD dissertation is referenced, then use
“Unpublished” as in the following example, if it is not published.
• For Ethiopian authors use the full name of the author.
– [5] Misganaw Kebede, “QoS Aware Routing Protocol for MANETs”,
Unpublished [BSc/Masters Thesis/PhD dissertation], Department of
Computer Science, Addis Ababa University, 2013.
• Since Computer Science is a dynamic field, try to use recent references.
• Except for some factual information, the results and conclusions of
most papers in Computer Science become outdated in few years. 20
 4.3 Typing Consideration
• The report must be typed on A4-size paper, preferably on one side of the
paper only.
• Font and font size: One of the following fonts should be used for all text
except algorithms and pseudo codes: Times or Times New Roman.
• Use Courier (or Courier New) for algorithms and pseudo codes.
• Use a 12-point font size. Use bigger fonts (incrementing by 1) for titles
and subtitles depending on the number of labels (depth or hierarchy) of
titles.
• There must be a margin of 1.3 inch on the left hand side of the page to
allow for binding, and margins of 1 inch for the top, right, and bottom.
• The typing must be 1.5-spaced.

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 4.3 Typing Consideration
• Don’t use a blank paragraph to create spacing between paragraphs.
Instead use 6 points below and 0 points above a paragraph.
• All paragraphs should be justified.
• All pages shall be numbered consecutively in the bottom, center
position.
• The pages must be numbered in Arabic numerals starting from the first
page of the Introduction chapter as page 1.
• Previous pages starting from the Table of Contents page must be
numbered using lower case roman numerals.
• All pages prior to the Table of Contents page do not have page numbers.
• Remember that the quality of a report is not judged by the number of
pages. Be focused and write to the point.

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 4.4 General Consideration
• In writing a report repetitions have to be avoided as much as possible.
It makes the report unreadable and boring if sentences or paragraphs are
repeated here and there throughout the report.
• This leads to what is known as “verbose” writing.
• The report should be understandable. If terms that are not yet covered
are used, give a cross reference so that the reader can refer to those
terms.
• Sections must be coherent and connected with each other.
• Never use I or my. Instead use We or our, since you are writing the
report in other group members and advisors.
• Avoid the use of “you” and its derivatives which is generally the case in
writing a user manual for a software. For instance, we have used such
kind of writing in this guideline, but not recommended for a report.

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 4.4 General Consideration
• Don’t start sentences with words such as And. Don’t also start a
sentence with references. The following is a bad style.
–“[5] defines research as …”.
• Know the difference between Internet and internet. While internet (with
lowercase i) refers to a network of two or more networks (also known as
an internetwork), Internet (with uppercase I) refers to a collaboration of
more than hundreds of thousands of interconnected networks worldwide.
• Know the difference between the Internet and the Web.
• The Internet is a network of networks that connects millions of
computers together globally, forming a network in which any computer
can communicate with any other computer as long as they are both
connected to the Internet. The World Wide Web, or simply Web, is a
way of accessing information over the Internet as a medium. It is an
information-sharing model that is built on top of the Internet. The
Internet is used not only to have access to information on the Web, but
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also for other applications such as e-mail, file transfer, remote login, etc.
 4.4 General Consideration
• Avoid copy/paste. This can be easily detected; for instance, use of rare
and unusual terms as is usually the case with non-English speakers
through the use of Thesaurus.
• Take ideas and use your own English.
• Avoid advert like statements. This is mostly the case in commercial Web
pages. Statements such as “xyz is the most widely used word processing
software in the world” is an advert like statement.
• Such statements can be used only if supported by proper evidence
(citation) which has to be the result of a study instead of a statement by
the manufacturer.
• Proofread the report many times before submission.
• We usually overlook our own errors. Hence and if possible, give it to a
friend even if s/he is not in the field.

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 4.4 General Consideration
• Use the feature of the word processor to correct common spelling and
grammatical errors. However, be careful since it doesn’t mean that all
the suggestions of a word processor are correct.
• The report has to be free of grammatical and typographic errors as far as
possible. The major error that is most observed is subject-verb
disagreement. The subject of a sentence must agree with the verb of the
sentence: in number: singular vs. plural; in person: first, second, or third
person.
• Hence, it has to be reviewed by a language expert to avoid such errors.
• Remember that the report will be archived and read later by your
students/any body.
• In such situations, such errors will be an embarrassment to you. What is
more annoying is when the report is a mix of paragraphs with no errors
and others full of errors which is usually an indication of copy/paste.
• Advisors are not also happy to have their names appear in a report if it is
badly written.
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 4.4 General Consideration
• One problem that is often observed is incomplete sentences.
• The following is an example.
– “Since the secret key must be transferred using secure channels.”
– The above sentence is incomplete and doesn’t convey any meaning.
• Use the SI (International System of Units) standard for measuring
length, weight, etc.
• SI uses meter and its derivatives (instead of inch, feet, mile or others)
for length and kilogram and its derivatives (instead of pound and
others) for weight.
• An exception would be the use of English units as identifiers in trade,
such as “3.5-inch disk drive”.
• Use a space between the number and the unit symbol such as 5 kg
instead of 5kg.

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 4.4 General Consideration
• Use a zero before decimal points such as “0.25” and not “.25”.
• Don’t write words in all capital letters unless it is an acronym or an
abbreviation. The first letter of proper names such as authors,
programming languages, etc. has to be in capital.
• Avoid using colors if the report is not to be printed in color, which is not
usually a requirement for a scientific writing. For figures, it is better to
use proper shading instead of colors.
• Note that sometimes color may not be avoidable such as in image
processing
• or in taking screenshots. In this, case make sure that each color is
• identifiable in a grey scale print out or selectively print those
• pages in color.

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 4.4 General Consideration
• The abbreviation “i.e.,” means “that is”, and the abbreviation “e.g.,”
means “for example”. In both cases please note the comma after the full
stop.
• Use a space before (not after) open bracket. Don’t use a space before
close bracket.
• If you are referring to a chapter or a section in the report you are writing,
capitalize the first letter of the words chapter and section.
• For instance, you could write “As discussed in Chapter Two, …” or as
indicated in Section 3.2, …”, etc.
• Small letters have to be used in references such as “in the previous
chapter” or “in the next section”, etc.

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 4.4 General Consideration
• Don’t use phrases such as “In the last 10 years …” since this is relative
to when the report was written.
• Instead write as “As of the year 2005 …”.
• Avoid using terms such as “ … in this country …” or “ … in our
country …” although you may be referring to Ethiopia.
• Remember that the report may be read by international readers.
• Hence, write explicitly as “ … in Ethiopia …”.
• If you use text boxes, make sure that the text fits into the box.
• It is mostly observed that half of the line is displayed while the
remaining half is hidden or some text is totally hidden.

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 4.4 General Consideration
• Use a space after a full stop that ends a sentence and before the first
character of the next sentence.
• Don’t use a space before a full stop, a comma, a semicolon, a colon or
a question mark.
• Use a space after each of these characters.
• If you are using non-English characters such as Ethiopic characters,
make sure that the printout is readable when printed from another
computer.
• Converting to a PDF format and printing the PDF version may solve
most of such problems.
• In technical reports using headers and footers is not recommended
(except page numbers as footers).

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 4.4 General Consideration
• Note that there is a confusion in the use of some measurement units.
• While network bandwidth is measured in Kbps (Kilobits per second)
or Mbps (Megabits per second) or Gbps (Gigabits per second),
memory and disk capacity are measured in KB (Kilobytes) or MB
(Megabytes) or GB (Gigabytes).
• For instance, we write 10 Mbps (not 10 MBps) for bandwidth and 10
MB for disk space.
• Use proper indent for bulleted and numbered lists.
• Take care not to write compound words as two separate words.
• Hence, write as “framework” not “frame work”, “overview” not “over
view”, “keyword” not “key word”, “database” not “data base”, etc.
• Note that some terms such as “equipment”, “hardware”, and “software”
do not have plural forms.

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 4.5 Making Excellent Presentation
 SLIDE PREPARATION
• Students will prepare a PowerPoint presentation and present their report:
 Slides must be numbered
 Don’t overcrowd the slides
 Choose a background that is simple and makes the text readable
 Don’t include new material that was not covered in the report -
diagrams, illustrations and examples are ok
 Use effects when absolutely necessary

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 4.5 Making Excellent Presentation
 PRESENTATION
• The following are some tips regarding slide preparation and
presentation.
 Usually you will be given a maximum of 10 minutes (For this course
only) for presentation and you should finish within the allotted time.
 Let a friend in the audience indicate to you the time left with
whatever sign the two of you agree.
 Dress neatly.
 Be confident - read and understand the material beforehand and try to
present without reading.
 Note that the whole purpose is to convince the examiners that you
have mastered the subject matter.

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 4.5 Making Excellent Presentation
 Be neither very fast nor very slow (this is very subjective).
 Face participants; don’t be shy.
 This shows your confidence towards the subject.
 Speak loudly so that the audience at the far end of the hall can
follow your presentation.

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 4.5 Making Excellent Presentation
 QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION
• There may be a maximum of 10 minutes for question and answer session.
During the question and answer session:
 Address questions properly.
 Be ready to be challenged; don’t be offended; it is the way of life in
academics.
 Examiners may ask questions to make sure that you very well know
what you are presenting.
 Say I don’t know if you don’t know the answer.

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