澳洲风险管理和金融工程作业 MSc Risk Management a

Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine
PROJECT GUIDELINES
MSc Risk Management and Financial Engineering 2008/09
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CONTENTS:
I General guidance
II Administrative matters
III Recommended reports
IV Writing up your Project
V Appendix
1. Sample Title Page
2. Referencing Notes
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MSc RISK MANAGEMENT AND FINANCIAL ENGINEERING
PROJECT 2008/09 - SUMMARY:
• The project comprises 20% of the overall mark for the MSc.
• The project must be submitted via Blackboard by 25 August 2009 (4:00pm).
• Projects will be marked by mid-October before the final Examiners meeting, which takes place at
the end of the month.
• Final grades for the MSc should be available in November.
The project is an original piece of research, which must not exceed 10,000 words (excluding tables,
refs, etc). There is no reason for students to aim for 10,000; that is an upper limit. A perfectly good
project might only comprise about 7,000 or 8,000 words. What matters is content, not length.
The Timetable
Fri 13 March Students submit dissertation topic via Blackboard by 4:00pm
Mon 20 April Students are assigned a supervisor
Tues 5 May Students submit literature survey via Blackboard by 4:00pm
W/c 11 May Students meet their supervisors and discuss their survey and project
Fri 3 July Students submit a progress report via Blackboard by 4:00pm
W/c 6 July Students meet their supervisors and discuss their progress & project
Mon 27 July Last date for final meeting with supervisor
Tues 25 August Submit completed project via Blackboard by 4:00pm
Your first major task, after deciding on and submitting your project topic, will be to complete a short
literature survey (maximum length 800 words) by 5th May. This literature survey is important in
order to focus your project and will be discussed with your supervisor during the week commencing
11th May. Your second task is to produce a progress report (maximum length 1000 words) by the
3rd July. During the week commencing 6th July you will meet your supervisor again in order to discuss
your progress report.
The literature survey and progress report are not formally assessed (the final project is weighted at
100%) but the subsequent two meetings are compulsory and will be organised by your supervisors,
who will expect this work to be completed before you meet.
Students are entitled to three additional meetings with their supervisors in June-July. These optional
meetings should be arranged by the students. Each meeting should not exceed 30mins.
Resit students are only required to submit their final project (i.e. they are not required to submit a
literature review or progress report). Resits students are entitled to the optional meetings with their
supervisor.
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I. GENERAL GUIDANCE#p#分页标题#e#
The first steps
The most important early task once your project topic has been chosen is to commence work on the
short literature survey due on 5th May. The survey is intended to make you familiar with current
research in the field, and to provide you with a point of departure for your own work and discussion
with your supervisor. In the short survey you must discuss the key papers that are directly related to
your project. The key papers are NOT necessarily restricted to those listed in the “project proposals”
booklet. You should demonstrate your ability to search and identify important additional articles. The
survey should also focus on your own proposed project and should answer the following questions.
What are your Objectives: (i.e. what do you expect to learn by undertaking this project?). What are
the Principal questions to be addressed? What are the Data requirements: (What data will you
use and how do you propose to obtain it?). What are your Software needs: (What software
packages do you intend to use, and why?). What are the Principal techniques: (For example, will
you be using MLE or GMM? Continuous-time asset pricing or binomial lattices?). What are the Dates
and milestones?
In your progress report due on 3rd July you must demonstrate that your project is underway, that you
have started to get some initial results from your analysis and show your supervisor that you have a
clear idea of what the final project would be like. You should discuss what data has already been
collected, what results have been derived, what the implications of these results are, what remaining
questions need to be investigated, and what the structure of your final project is.
The benefits of the project
The project plays an essential part in the educational process. It is something that is exclusively
yours and you have to take responsibility for what you get out of it. The academic staff will help,
facilitate and finally assess your efforts, but the responsibility for the project is your own. An
electronic copy of your project, assuming it 'passes', will be accessible in the College Library. Future
students and other users will read it and it will appear under your name.
The benefit that you get from the project will depend on the nature of the project and will therefore
vary. It is likely to include, however, some mix of the following:
• a deeper understanding of some aspect of financial markets, industry, the economy
• development of technical expertise in e.g., financial analysis, mathematical modelling, information
technology, forecasting, computing
• better understanding and better performance in the process of research. e.g. familiarity with
sources and use of data, ability to evaluate and synthesise existing literature, present findings
accurately, clearly and concisely.#p#分页标题#e#
Of course, not all projects will provide all of these benefits, certainly not to the same degree and you
will probably have strong views on what kind of benefit you want to emphasise when you select your
project.
Planning your project
In planning your project you should consider the following:
1. It is important to select a topic in which you are interested rather than one that you believe will be
easy to do.
2. The absolute minimum that will gain a pass is a very well executed replication of a piece of
research that has been done by someone else, but on a different data set from yours, or applied
to a different type of asset etc. But if you aim merely for this minimum you run the risk that your
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execution will not be of a sufficiently high standard. What we are really looking for is for you to
generate a small number of your own ideas or questions and to investigate these professionally,
using the techniques you have learned on the course. One way to do this is to develop an
existing piece of work by testing or relaxing some of the assumptions on which it is based.
Matlab Clinic
There will be a Matlab econometrics clinic to answer student’s general queries on Matlab
programming and applied econometrics that may arise when undertaking the MSc project. This will
include advice on interpreting econometric results and general issues about programming in Matlab.
The clinic will be for general guidance only and will direct you to appropriate text books/references
where this is appropriate. It WILL NOT, for example, answer any questions, which directly arise from
other courses (e.g. SAFE), nor will it check or write programs – this is your responsibility. Details of
the staffing and times of availability will be announced later in the year.
What your supervisor will do
1 Your supervisor will offer advice on whether you are being too ambitious, or not ambitious
enough, both in your initial proposal and throughout the supervision period. In either case, it will
be up to you to decide how to rectify the situation.
2 The choice and the quality of the final project are your responsibility, not your supervisor’s. It is
important that you recognise that you will be doing the work for the project; your supervisor will
simply provide general guidance. A project is not a taught course; a key part of the task is for
you to choose various avenues (some of which may prove to be dead-ends) to investigate.
3 Your supervisor will be more reactive than proactive: It is up to you to come up with suggestions
for your work, on which your supervisor will comment, not the other way around. I.e. your
supervisor will not tell you what you should work on, nor will he/she tell you what you should ‘do
next’, or what you should do to ‘get a distinction’. He or she will assess your proposed course of#p#分页标题#e#
action however, and advise you as to whether it is sensible or not.
4 You will meet your supervisor no more than 5 times. The literature survey and progress report
meetings are compulsory. You are also entitled to three additional and optional meetings. These
should be arranged by the students. The last meeting will be no later than Monday 27 July.
Each meeting will last about 30 minutes. These meetings should be spaced at reasonable
intervals. More frequent/longer meetings would be a matter of goodwill rather than entitlement.
This is to ensure an approximately equal allocation of ‘supervision time’ to each student, and to
allow sufficient time for you to write up your results.
N.B. Resits students are entitled to three optional meetings with their supervisor.
5 Supervisors may wish to communicate, in addition to the above meetings, by email or via
Blackboard. However, unless your supervisor specifically agrees with you, no written material
should be sent to your supervisor by email.
6 Your supervisor will not read drafts of your work. If you believe that you have problems with
presentation etc it is your responsibility to raise these with your supervisor during your meetings.
7 Please note that it is not part of your supervisor's responsibility to correct errors of English
language or style. If you feel you need help in this respect it is your responsibility to arrange this.
Keep an eye out for information about the English Language sessions taking place at the start of
the summer term.
Research strategy
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Right from the start you should think about how you will organise your research, and how you will
structure the eventual project. It is very important that you decide the following very early on:
1 Exactly what questions are you seeking answers to? While your project may cover a broad area,
your contribution will usually be a short list of very narrowly defined questions to answer. At the
end of the project you will know whether or not you have finished by whether or not you have
learned the answers to these questions. The quality of the project will then depend in part on
whether the answers are plausible.
2 What econometric or other techniques will allow you to answer the questions?
3 Sketch out a work plan e.g.:
• Collect relevant academic papers for the project
• Decide exactly what the project will be about
• Decide on data needs
• Gather the data
• Test your hypotheses/estimate your model etc.
• Write up the results
• Hand it in
• Collapse
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II. ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS
Plagiarism
The college takes the issue of plagiarism very seriously. The college is currently using specialised
software to check every project against an extensive database. If your completed MSc project is#p#分页标题#e#
discovered to contain verbatim material from other sources which has not been acknowledged
or put between inverted commas, this will be referred to the College authorities. If plagiarism is
found to have taken place your MSc qualification may be withdrawn (e.g. even if the plagiarism is
discovered several years after submission). Last year thirty cases of plagiarism were reported to the
College authorities.
Confidentiality
Your report will normally be placed in the library where, in principle, any authorised library user may
consult it. If, in consultation with your supervisor and any sponsoring organisation, you wish for
reasons of business confidentiality to withhold your report from the library, you must write to Paolo
Zaffaroni (p.zaffaroni@imperial.ac.uk) for permission for this at least ONE MONTH before the
submission date.
The college will require a letter from your employer, the Programme Director and yourself
requesting that your project is withheld from the library. Once this request has been approved
the library will withhold your project from the public domain for two years.
Questionnaires
If your research relies on the use of questionnaires as a means of collecting primary information you
must apply to Paolo Zaffaroni (p.zaffaroni@imperial.ac.uk) for authorisation before sending your
questionnaires on Imperial College headed notepaper.
If you use surveys or questionnaires whilst undertaking your project, you must retain the completed
versions for inspection by your project supervisor or external examiner. You do not need to submit
these with your final project or include them in the appendices but you need to have them available in
case they are requested. Any attempt to generate or manipulate primary data to influence the
results of your project is considered to be a serious academic offence and will be severely
penalised.
How Will Your Project Be Assessed?
It is important to bear in mind that the project is an indispensable requirement of the academic
qualification that you are hoping to receive at the end of the course. The examiners will want to
ensure that you have been rigorously tested and that what you learned is not so narrow or fleeting
that you have gained nothing that will be of lasting benefit. Your approach to your project should
therefore be guided by the following:
1. All theses should have a critical, evaluative or analytical element. They should not consist of
mere data collection unless the collection itself calls for enterprise, ingenuity, interviewing or
questionnaire design skills or an otherwise demanding methodology. The project should
normally, therefore, not consist only of the collection of secondary data (i.e. data that already
exist) without subsequent analysis by you.#p#分页标题#e#
Primary data collection may be sufficient if the required method itself is sufficiently
challenging but even here, proper analysis of the data will usually be required.
A literature-based project requires more than identification of sources, summarising,
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classification etc., but calls for critical evaluation, synthesising, identification of gaps, etc.
If case studies or in-depth interviews are used, these should be evaluated for their general
significance and implications rather than merely reported.
The project is an opportunity to apply what you have learned on the rest of the MSc
programme and to demonstrate that you have learned it thoroughly, that you know what is
and what is not useful in a particular context or problem. Make appropriate use of concepts,
models, and principles that you have learned, but do not, of course, distort the project to
make it fit a preconceived model.
2. Apart from the quality of the work that you do for your project you will be judged on the quality
of the way in which you report it. In the section below, "Writing up your Project", you are
given detailed guidance on how this should be done. This is concerned mainly with technical
matters of sequence, layout, presentation of references and so on.
You need always to put yourself in the position of a reader who may be reading your report in
a few years time. The reader may want to extend or update your report so always try to make
it as user-friendly as you can by showing your sources (or data, published literature etc.) in
such a way that they can easily be identified. If you use a number of abbreviations, make
sure that these are fully explained perhaps by providing a convenient glossary.
Remember also that you are writing a report for the award of a degree. Your language and
vocabulary should not be excessively informal, colloquial or journalistic (certainly not tabloid).
If you lack confidence in the quality of your written English, even after using spell-check, try to
recruit a friend to read through and polish your presentation.
3. You will be assessed also on how well you organise and carry out your work on the project.
As always in life, you will not have sufficient time to do all what you would like to do. Part of
the value of the project lies in learning to plan the schedule and performance of the
constituent tasks effectively.
You will be amazed by how quickly the time will pass. Do not postpone work that can be
done now and above all do not assume that other people (e.g. those whom you may wish to
interview or ask for data) will be available just when you want them to be. Do not assume
also that equipment (e.g. computers and printers) will be available just when you want them
especially as the submission date approaches.
At the end of this section is a list of reports from earlier years that we judged to be good standard.#p#分页标题#e#
Have a look at these in the Library. You will find some reports that are undoubtedly less good but
there may have been mitigating circumstances in such cases. In any case, you will want to set your
sights high to gain the maximum benefit from the experience and to leave behind for others to read a
record of your work that you would be proud for them to see.
All these "do's and don'ts" may sound rather intimidating but remember the project is intended to be
for your benefit: work hard and enjoy it!
Submission
The project along with any key programmes should be submitted via Blackboard by 4:00pm
Tuesday 25 August 2009. The name of the files should be the same as your examination candidate
number e.g. 00123456.doc or 00123456.pdf. Submissions by hand or by email will not be
accepted.
All projects must be submitted with the following completed forms: project submission and
plagiarism form, supervisor evaluation form and Alumni registration form. Copies of these
forms will be available on Blackboard. Failure to submit any of the required documents may be
considered as failure to submit your project (refer to section Late Submission).
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Electronic submission for the project will close at the cut-off deadline (4:00pm on the submission day).
If you encounter problems with uploading your project onto Blackboard you must contact your
Programme Administrator before the deadline. Do not wait until the last minute to submit your
project!
Reports that satisfy the Examiners (pass) will be available electronically on the library database for
future reference.
Late Submission
The College regulations state that late submission will only be allowed for reasons of illness
(supported by a medical certificate) or death of a near relative.
If you fail to submit your project, the relevant Examination Regulations of the College will
deem you to have failed to present yourself for all required examinations. You would then be
required to re-enter the whole course. Whatever happens, you must submit your project at the
required time even if it only consists of a cover page with your name and project title.
What Happens If?
The project fails. You will then be responsible for eventual re-submission the following year.
Extensions
Please note that extensions are not given for the project.
Requests for extensions based on work commitments will not be granted.
An extension (late submission) is only considered when a student has extenuating circumstances, as
detailed in the Late Submission section above.
Absence from College
The regulations covering the MSc programme allow a student to be absent from the college for a
maximum 2 months. Any such absence must be exclusively for the purpose of conducting the project,
must have the approval of your supervisor and permission from the college. College permission can#p#分页标题#e#
be sought only by way of the Programme Director.
Please note: Unauthorised absence will jeopardise your claim to have completed the registration
requirements of the College.
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III. RECOMMENDED REPORTS
The following represent a sample of reports that were considered to be of good quality that were
submitted for MSc Risk Management and Financial Engineering from the previous two years.
Author Year Title
Nada Al Bastaki 2007/8 The predictability of sukuks and their diversification benefits
Zhaowei Liu 2007/8 Predictability of stock returns
Valerie Odette Stephan 2007/8 Impact of Solvency II pm the structures of Insurance linked
securities www.hsltc.com
Izaskun Merino Sautua 2007/8 Optimal Structured Product Allocation
Xizhe Tan 2007/8 Bubbles in asset prices in markets of different market
efficiency level
Nikolaus von Solodkoff 2007/8 Development of Trading Models
Guowen Qin 2007/8 Trading Strategy on Volatility
Chenghan Wen 2007/8 International portfolio diversification
Ayisha Cecile Fraser 2007/8 Tactical Asset Allocation (area)
Yizhou Wang 2007/8 The Black-Litterman portfolio allocation model
Lorenzo Diurni 2007/8 Default correlation
Pavel Zhdanov 2007/8 Asset Allocation and Regime Switching Models Issues
Haijian Fan 2006/7 Synthetic CDO Pricing and Hedging using Two-Factor
Portfolio Credit Model
Achilleas Michos 2006/7 Pricing Derivatives using Monte Carlo Techniques
Constantinos Giachalis 2005/7 Trading Strategy on Volatility
Andrew Gibbs 2005/7 Calibrating and Pricing Options using the CEV Model as an
Alternative to Local Volatility
The following projects were all submitted for MSc Finance and represent a sample of risk-focused
reports that were considered to be of good quality during the previous years.
Author Year Title
Atak Kara 2006/7 Option Pricing with Support Vector Machines
Marc Middelmann 2006/7 A Modern Perspective on Conglomerate Discount in
Germany and the Role of Corporate Governance
Prempal Singh 2006/7 Daimler Benz and the Chrysler Merger: An Examination of
Value Creation for Shareholders
Bassil Yousif 2006/7 Discrete-Time Option Hedging With Transaction Costs
Chi Man Kwan 2006/7 Predictability of Return in Hong Kong Stock Market
Minal Lavingia 2005/6 The pricing of CDS options under a time-changed Levy
framework
Meng Shi 2005/6 Explaining the Cross-Section of Chinese Expected Stock
Returns
Quin Wang 2005/6 Valuation of Asset Securitization for US Commercial Banks
Lewis Webber 2005/6 Valuation of European and American-Style Asian Options on
an Underlying Asset with Constant and Stochastic Volatility
Jingjing Xiao 2005/6 Equity Valuation with Forecast Earnings
Tom Logan 2004/5 Pricing Collateralised Debt Obligations using T-Copulas#p#分页标题#e#
Yue Hin Lo 2004/5 An Application of Wavelet Analysis to Discrete-Time Optimal
Hedging Strategy
Ryan Jong 2004/5 Gazing the Crystal Ball: Forming Predictive Distributions of
Next Day Equity Returns; the Extended Jong and Hall Model
Josh Matthew Anstey 2003/4 Pricing Credit Derivatives-Nth to Default Swaps
Antoine Bechet 2003/4 Pricing of Credit Default Swaps
James Charlesworth 2003/4 A Monte-Carlo Approach to the Pricing of Interest Rate
Swaptions
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John Stuart Gardener 2003/4 Value at Risk: An Analysis of Estimation Techniques and
Option Positions
Patrice Guesnet 2003/4 Credit Default Swaps: A Tool to Assess Sovereign Default
Risk
Teng Jiang 2003/4 Stock Returns Forecasting: A Comparison of Improved
Neural Networks
Manoj Kumar Kapai 2003/4 Pricing Barrier Options
Lin Luo 2003/4 Valuation of Companies: A Real Options Approach
Alexis Galatariotis 2002/3 Determinants of corporate risk management for US nonfinancial
firms
Richard Maile 2002/3 A comparison between analytical and numerical techniques
for pricing weather derivatives
Pavlos Vitos 2002/3 Application of real options to shipping investments
Stamatis Bezerianos 2002/3 Estimation of the term structure of interest rates using
numerical techniques
Alexander Bleck 2002/3 Swaption skews in the LIBOR market model
Baudovin Del Marmol 2002/3 Computation of the error in a minimum variance hedge
Constantinos Ekkeshis 2002/3 FTSE 100: testing market efficiency
Rifaie Khairulanwar 2002/3 KR-model: a bankruptcy Prediction model for companies in
Malaysia
Christopher Blair 2001/2 Pricing derivatives using Monte-Carlo techniques
James Patrick Hoare 2001/2 Modelling the term structure of default
Lydia Kurniawan 2001/2 Market efficiency on the stock market
Matteo Nardi 2001/2 Forecasting volatility
Christos Papakyriakou 2001/2 Behavioural finance, noise traders and technical
analysis
Matthew Reid 2001/2 Credit derivatives
Yan Hoo Yip 2001/2 Valuing investments using real options
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IV. WRITING UP YOUR PROJECT
These notes have been designed to answer, briefly, many of the questions, which you may otherwise
have asked your supervisors individually. Much of the information is advisory, but some sections
(introduced by a heading in capital letters) are mandatory and failure to observe them may
result in the project being rejected.
The Examiners pay special attention not only to the content of the reports but also to their
presentation. In this connection it is important that each student ensures that the material in the
report is presented in grammatically correct English and is free from spelling, typographical and other
errors. The Examiners may in appropriate cases require the student to carry out amendments to the
presentation (i.e. to correct the above-mentioned errors) within a period of one month after the#p#分页标题#e#
Examiners meeting.
Order of Presentation
This should follow the scheme given below, although not every item may occur in a given report:
1. Title page
2. List of contents
3. Synopsis (200-250 words)
4. Acknowledgements
5. Notation
6. Main text of the report including terms of reference, objectives and conclusions
7. References
8. Appendix or appendices
N.B. Pages must be numbered with page 1 on the first page of the first chapter (or Introduction)
through to the end.
Important
All projects must include a synopsis page. The main text must begin with a clear statement of
about one page in length setting out the terms of reference and objectives of the project as agreed
with the supervisor. Every project, irrespective of the nature of the topic, must contain a critical
comment based on the considered assessment of the material/evidence presented in it: this is an
essential requirement, as are the conclusions of the report.
Title Page
This must be arranged as shown in the specimen sheet, which is attached to these notes. The
template can also be downloaded from Blackboard.
Acknowledgement
You may wish to acknowledge help given from three different sources:
1. From people outside the School - staff of other departments, the Computer Unit, industrial
companies, etc.
2. You may, as a matter of courtesy, wish to acknowledge the general guidance of your supervisor,
but this should be a fairly simple statement.
3. You may have had special help from staff inside the School in which case, it should be
acknowledged collectively in one simple sentence.
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Notation
The extent to which you list any symbols used in your report must be left to your discretion. Symbols,
which are used in several parts of your report, should preferably be listed before the main text for
easy reference. Symbols which are used only once or in one part of the report may be referred to in
that part only. Generally, try to place yourself in the position of a reader with average background
knowledge and arrange the notation in a manner, which will be most convenient for him/her to follow.
Main Text
If you have not had experience in writing a project, these few notes will not put matters right but the
following points should be borne in mind:
1. A university project is not available to the general public by any means of distribution and
accordingly, you do not need to worry about getting permission from copy-right holders in
making direct quotations or copying figures from other publications (sources must be
acknowledged though this is done for completeness rather than legality). You must also
indicate by the use of inverted commas or different typeface the quoted material so
that it is clearly identified as such. However, if you subsequently write up your work, in#p#分页标题#e#
conjunction with your supervisor, as a paper, then you are subject to normal copyright laws
and must only quote very brief extracts even from those Journals, which subscribe to the
Royal Society's convention on Fair Copying.
2. Since the text and illustrations are rarely done concurrently and/or by the same person, it is
difficult to make a project look like a printed work and it is sometimes far better to produce
most of the figures and tables at the end of the text.
3. The main text of the project should start with a literature review. In a review and discussion of
the work of others (and at all times) it should be clear from the text which of the opinions
expressed are those of the author and which are those of other people.
4. In a project involving experimental or fieldwork, as well as theory, calculations, etc., the text
could be divided as follows:
Experimental technique and method
Experimental results
Theoretical work
Theoretical results
Discussion and conclusion
(Not necessarily in this order)
Presentation
It is important that all work is legible and should be produced using Arial font size 11. Adequate
margins should be left on each side of the paper.
A single colour of ink should be used. Projects are not always marked electronically by staff and if
printed, will be printed in black ink so any references to coloured text might be overlooked.
It is also important that you produce your work in a printable format. Use the ‘print preview’
function to ensure that the work will print exactly as you would expect. Projects will be printed in
batches and time will not be spent by School staff re-formatting submitted work.
It is recommended that you put your name in a header or footer so that it appears on every page.
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References
It is mandatory that your project contains a full list of references at the end of the report. Unless
references are full and correct they are, at worst, useless and at best a source of considerable trouble
to anyone who is trying to find the original. Although there are many correct ways to reference, the
method described below is the prescribed method. This is the Harvard Referencing System (as
opposed to the Vancouver system, which follows a numbering system). No report will be accepted if
the references do not conform to the following conventions.
Indicate references to the literature in the report by giving, in parenthesis, the author’s name
followed by the date of publication.
For example: in the text of the report you should include the name and date of the reference as
follows (and where necessary page numbers)
One research area in IS concerns the study of global systems as described by Roche (1999 pp.44-
52).
At the end of the report, in a section headed REFERENCES all references should be listed in#p#分页标题#e#
alphabetical order, and take the following form:
Books: Author's(s) name(s) and initials - the date of publication - title of book and volume number if
necessary - the correct name of the publishing company and the town of their head office in the
country in which the book was published - details of the edition - the page numbers of the section
quoted, if known.
For example:
Roche, E.M., 1999: Managing Information Technology in Multinational Corporations. Macmillan, New
York.
For papers, articles: Author's(s) name(s) and initials - the year of publication - title of paper - the
journal in which it was published - the volume number and part number where a volume is specifically
divided - the page numbers.
For example:
Shore, B., Ventures, A.R., 2000: “Role of national culture in the transfer of information technology”.
Journal of Strategic Information Systems 5 (3), 19-25.
For material taken from the Internet, references should be shown as:
http://ftp.indirect.com/www/evecam/poems.html (version current, Dec 1998).
For reports and proceedings, etc references should be shown as:
Lowen, E.G., Marshall, E.R. and Shaw, M.C. (1951): Electric strain gauge tool dynamometer. Proc.
Soc. Exp. Stress Anal. Vol. 8, pp 1-16.
In some cases, it may be necessary to add a list of other works which may be consulted although not
specifically cited - this list should be headed BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Appendices
Appendices should be included where necessary to develop a theme or analysis, which is not
necessary to a first reading of the report and which, if included in the main text, would tend to confuse
the general line of argument.
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Computer Print-Out/Programmes
This can be incorporated as follows:
1. Included as an appendix at the end of the report.
2. On computer disks. These should be give to the programmes team or to your supervisor.
Length
There is no merit in making the project longer than it need be. The length should be commensurate
with presenting a systematic, readable, but concise account of the work done. The project must not
exceed 10,000 words (excluding list of contents, acknowledgements, and computer printout).
Report Writing
Remember that the examiners attach a lot of importance to presentation. If you feel that you do not
write clear English, you should read one or two of the following. The little book by Strunk and White is
particularly helpful.
EWING, DW, 1985: Writing for Results in Business, Government, the Sciences and the Professions.
2nd ed. Wiley, New York.
GOWERS, E, 1986: The Complete Plain Words. Penguin, Harmondsworth.
STRUNK & WHITE, 1982: The Elements of Style. 3rd ed., Macmillan, New York.
TURABIAN, KL, 1982: A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Thesis and Thesiss. Heinemann,#p#分页标题#e#
London.
TURK CHRISTOPHER, 1989: Effective Writing. 2nd Edition, Spon, London
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V. APPENDIX 1 - SAMPLE TITLE PAGE
<Title of Thesis>
<Author>
A project submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of <enter degree here> and the Diploma of
Imperial College London
<Date>
17
V. APPENDIX 2 – REFERENCING NOTES
REFERENCING NOTES
Dr. Baggy Cox
Imperial College Business School
Anybody reading, seeing or hearing your work must be able to locate the exact source of your
material regardless of whether this material is in the format of text, figures, graphs, charts or websites.
The Imperial College Business School uses the Harvard Referencing Method.
1. CITING REFERENCES IN THE TEXT
1.1 Paraphrasing
The following text is extracted directly from a book by Laudon and Laudon –
“Four powerful worldwide changes have altered the business environment. The first change is
the emergence and strengthening of the global economy. The second change is the
transformation of service economies. The third is the transformation of the business
enterprise. The fourth is the emergence of the digital firm”.
If you wish to refer to these ideas in your work without committing plagiarism you need to
acknowledge their source within your own text. You must include the authors’ name or names
followed by the publication date in parentheses.
Example
As Laudon & Laudon (2004) suggest there has been an emergence and strengthening of the global
economy as well as a transformation of industrial economies into knowledge and information-based
service economies.
1.2 Direct Quotes
If you are quoting any part of an original source without alteration, in addition to the authors names
and the date you must also use quotation marks to indicate the direct quotation as well as the page
number.
Example
Recent years have seen widespread transformation in the business world. A major change has been
in the ‘emergence and strengthening of the global economy’ (Laudon & Laudon, 2004 p.4)
1.3 Electronic sources
Material taken from electronic sources such as the Internet must be attributed.
Example
It is suggested that less than half of Americans who need a flu shot get one
(http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/)
1.4 Multiple Authors
If there are more than two authors the surname of the first author should be given followed by et al
written in italics
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Example
Smith et al (2001) suggest that…..
1.5 More than one document published by an author in the same year
If the author has published more than one document in the same year which you wish to cite, they are
distinguished by adding lower case letters (a,b) after the date.#p#分页标题#e#
Example
This suggestion was first put forward by Winton (2001a). The argument is further addressed in
Winton (2001b).
1.6 Secondary referencing
Secondary referencing should be avoided where possible. However, if you are not quoting an original
document but one which is cited by another author you must reference both works
Example 澳洲essay指导王 www.hsltc.com

澳洲essay指导