Reporting

Here we represent the basis of a brief report on the regression analysis of milk offtake that can be suitably conveyed to other researchers.

We first present a suitable presentation for a summary table (Table 1). Note that no levels of significance are quoted in the table (these are quoted in the text), that the heading for the table is self explanatory (i.e. a reader can understand the contents of the table without necessarily referring to the text), and that numbers are presented in the table with a precision that is both merited by the data and makes the table easily interpretable and readable.

The table illustrates both the use of standard deviations (to give a measure of the spread of the data) and standard errors (to give a measure of the precision with which the regression coefficients are estimated). Standard errors are more commonly reported than standard deviations, since it is usually the precision with which parameter estimates are determined that is of primary interest.

Table 1. Mean milk offtake and regression coefficients with age of calf in Orma Boran cows sampled in Bilisa and Assa locations in Tana River district, Kenya.

Location	Number of cows	Mean ± s.d. (litres)	Regression coefficient ± s.e. (litres/calf age in months)
Bilisa	111	1.8 ± 0.06	-0.096 ± 0.022
Assa	53	1.0 ± 0.05	0.007 ± 0.025