Abstract

This analysis paper is base on Mike’s eights elements, which are the title, abstract, introduction, method and materials, result, discussion, conclusion, and reference. I found two short lab reports on the ccny database; Both reports are about book recognition. All I have to do is to compare both lab reports according to the definition of the eight elements. I also need to put my our analysis and ideas on each aspect.

Rhetorical Analysis of Lab Reports

Qichen You March/24/2019

Introduction

Each lab report is the result of the labors of a group of people or individuals. It can not only give others reading and learning, but also let them know more about their fields and get inspired by it. Through the analysis of two different experimental reports, we can also learn the application and structure of different writing skills. Formal experiment report divide into eight steps, but not every lab report needs to implement all eight. The two lab reports I’ll examine next may not all have the same elements, but the authors use their subheadings to explain the same type of paragraphs. These two lab reports are related to the text recognition of books. They are “Smart Library: Identifying Books on Library Shelves using Supervised Deep Learning(A particular programming language in computer science) for Scene Text Reading” by Xiao Yang, Dafang He, Wenyi Huang, Alexander Ororbia, Zihan Zhou, Daniel Kifer, and C. Lee Giles, and “Combining Image and Text Features: A Hybrid Approach to Mobile Book Spine Recognition” by Sam S. Tsai, David Chen, Huizhong Chen, Cheng-Hsin Hsu, Kyu-Han Kim, Jatinder P. Singh, and Bernd Girod.

Title

The title should first clearly describe the topic of your entire report, the more detailed, the better. Then your claim doesn’t need to be too complicated because you don’t know who your readers are. Yang et al. use a simple word that not only tells you how the experiment is identifying text in a book but also tells you which method is used. Thus, I think the title is both detailed and precise. In contrast, Tsai et al. also has a long informative title. But the difference between the two is that the first one mentions the specific technology to be used, while the second one explains what the hybrid approach is. Even though I know what hybrid approach is, I still don’t know what technique they are going to use. In my view, I think it is essential to put the name of the method on the title because it is easy to search as a keyword by readers if they want some needs for that technique. Therefore, I think the theme of the first one is more detailed and closer to the description of the title in the book, while the second one lacks the technology needed for the content.

Abstract

Unlike the title, your abstract should include the purpose of the experiment, essential conclusions, and methods. You don’t need to add your interpretation and understanding. Let the reader know the general content of the whole experiment report. The beginning of both reports explains why they need to do this project. Yang et al.’s reason is that manually finding books is too troublesome, so this project is to reduce the time of finding books. He then went on to describe the techniques to be used, and what they thought would be the result. On the contrary, Tsai et al. is to improve the book’s recognition ability, and he introduced the specific method and the numerical result. The main abstract step is the introduction of causes, methods and techniques, concrete operations, and results. Even though both lab reports didn’t exactly follow what the textbook said, we got a general idea as well as the rough content they are going to demonstrate in the rest. Therefore, they are both informative abstracts, which are useful for understanding the whole lab report.

Introduction

The introduction explains what the experiment needs to prove. Secondly, I will briefly introduce the previous experiments related to this experiment and write down their achievements or shortcomings. Yang et al.’s report is designed to reduce the time spent searching for books. To make it easier for readers to understand, he used a lot of graphics in the introduction to representing the whole process of the experiment, and a paragraph to explain the text of those graphics. The more specific techniques he used are CNN(a type of model in computer science), RNN(a kind of model in computer science), and CTC(a kind of model in computer science). On the other hand, Tsai et al. gives a brief analysis of previous research paper. Then he listed the algorithms that used in the whole lab, which are MSER(detection method), SWT(extraction method), and OCR(recognition application); his latest way combines image recognition with text recognition. The difference is Tsai et al. focuses on the different division of labor of various members, which may be to emphasize their positions. What they have in common is a detailed description of the tools and steps.

Method and Materials

Describe your methods in enough detail that another researcher could perform the same experiment using the same materials and methods. Because the two lab reports are similar, the devices they use are computer software and mobile phones as well as some algorithms for deep learning, which is explained in detail in the “related work” section of each report. Yes, both reports have the same section called “related work,” which is the comparison between the result of other lab reports and their lab report. Another similarity of both lab reports is the operations of text recognition, which are text detection, text extraction, and text recognition. They put them in the different sections and describe each step precisely. However, as I have said in the previous paragraph, the algorithms they implemented are different. Tsai et al. needs the other procedure called image recognition to set up what he called “hybrid approach”. The algorithms Tsai et al. used for the image recognition are SURF(one of the references of Tsai et al.) and RANSA(one of the references of Tsai et al.). The method part is divided into several parts. The main reason for this is to separate several significant steps, and then each section is used to explain each step. It will be easier to read, instead of putting a bunch of paragraphs in a single section.

Result

The experimental data, formulas, icons, and calculations need to be put in a place where they can be easily displayed. The data should be easy to understand. Yang et al. didn’t set the result as a single selection but put it together with discussion. They compared the results of their experiments with the results of other people’s studies, and their results confirm that their data are stronger than other research reports. I think the reason why they did this is to prove their method is correct through data comparison, and this comparison and contrast method can generate a sense of persuasion. In contrast, the Tsai et al.’s report used a graph to show the character recognition ability, the figure recognition ability, and their hybrid recognition ability. Their method proved to be the most discerning. Because their way is a combination of graphics and text, the contrast is easily recognized by readers. The similarity of the two results is both use data and graphs to prove their research is successful.

Discussion

The discussion section is where you interpret your results; that is, you answer the question or support (or argue against) the hypothesis you discussed in your introduction. Both the Yang et al. and Tsai et al. had good advantages on comparing their results with the results for other researches. Although their topics were different, I found that the data they compared were almost the same at the end of the discussion. They used different methods but all aimed at improving the ability of word recognition.

Conclusion

The conclusion is to summarize the main points covered by your report in one or two concise paragraphs. The abstract and the ending are the two parts most frequently seen by readers, so the most critical essence should be written on them. Both lab reports ended up saying all the significant results, and all their findings were used to identify books with the mobile phone or such devices so as not to waste time. Yang et al. emphasize the performance of their research results, the low requirements on the database, and the success of the initial lab goal. On the other side, Tsai et al. Repeats everything they did so far and comes with a decent lab result.

Reference

Any information you get from computers, books, magazines, etc., put it all together and put it in reference. That way, people will know where the reference room you came from. Both reports had more than fifteen references. One of the references in Yang et al.’s lab report is Tsai et al.

Conclusion

Lab reports in different fields may have different structures. For me, the two reports I have been exposed to make me feel that although their results are similar, the process is entirely different, which brings me back to the diversity of the field of computer science, the multiple branches. It’s always changing every day, and these reports are like our understanding and research of computer science at different times. A comparison of the two lab reports with eight elements provides a better understanding of their structure and application.

Self-Reflection

What I did is trying to compare two lab reports and write an analysis. I do copy down the definition of the eight elements to help me complete my analytical paper.

I finished doing reading, drafting, editing, and revising, but self-assessment. I think it is unnecessary to do an assessment by oneself. I rather give my analytical paper to one of my friends and let him to finish the assessment. It probably could provide more useful ideas than my self-assessment. I do read the paper either the first draft and the second draft again and again because it not only helps to find out the grammar error during the reading; it can also test the smooth of my paper. There are no differences between revising and editing for me. They are all the ways to help make some adjustments on my analytical paper after I got the feedback for my classmate.

Of course, I can’t avoid having multiple draft since I need to do the revising and editing. Those strategies are very helpful. The only goal of my analytical paper to show the differences and the similarities of two lab reports. I use comparison and contrast to achieve my goal, and I think this paper is help me to understand the eight elements of lab report as well as to use them properly.

This is an individual assignment. All works of my analytical paper were finished by myself. I found two lab reports on the internet, then I finished the rest of work by own.

I didn’t use multimodal, but I used genre analysis, which analyze each element separately.

I didn’t have stance in the analytical paper is because I don’t have to formulate a stance in that kind of paper. The only thing I need to do is analyze and compare these two lab reports and share the information to the audiences. It is not a persuasive paper, which I need to articulate my stance.

The analytical paper of two lab reports requires two lab reports that related to my field. Thus, I found two short lab reports on the internet because it is fastest way to find the resources I need.

Since the analytical paper only required two lab reports, I don’t have to use any extra resources to complete my work. However, I need to analyze these two lab reports by using the eight element and also need to summarize these two lab reports at the end of the paper. For each paragraph, I picked some context with the same subtitle and evaluate them by using comparison and contrast; It is also the main mediums for this paper.