LaTeX
Lab reports have to be typed and structured. Discuss the results. Be clear. You don't have to use LaTex, any wordprocessing program will do. Just make sure your reports are neat, the figures are included in the text with appropriate labeling etc.
It is very useful to know LaTex and it is so easy to get
started. Below I have provided you with two example files: report.tex and reportlatex.tex. I use pdflatex myself, and WinEdt with MikTeX. To generate a report like report, I compile report.tex in WinEdT, and a pdf file is generated. On a linux machine you can generate the same result by issuing the command "pdflatex report.tex" at the command line. If you don't have access to pdflatex, but do have access to latex, the reportlatex.tex file will generate the same output in a series of commands. First compile the tex file with command "latex reportlatex.tex", which generates a dvi file. Then, convert the dvi into a pdf file using "dvipdf report.dvi > report.pdf".
Phil Spector
has written a great tutorial on latex that you can download and print it out for
free.
What you want to do to get started is copy the file report.tex
and use that as a basis to write your own stuff.
If you want to include figures and plots in your report you want to
convert your R or Splus plots to a postscript or pdf file. In R/Splus you write the
command postscript("fit.ps") and then your plotting
commands like par(mfrow=c(m,n)), plot(x,y) etc. When you
have finished your plot you write dev.off() and the
postscript file is generated. You can produce pdf files in a similar fashion. Alternatively, using the R windows installation you can simply use the pull down menues to save a figure as a postscript or pdf (or jpeg) file.
You can then "call" the plot in you
report.tex file (see the example file).
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