Results say what, discussion says why

Two sections, two jobs:

• Results: what you found. Facts, numbers, figures. No speculation.
• Discussion: what it means. Interpretation, comparison with other work, implications, limits.

Mixing them makes it hard for readers to tell what you observed from what you believe.

Results: report, don't argue

• Lead each paragraph with the finding, then the evidence: "Augmentation helped most with small datasets (Fig. 2): with 200 images, accuracy rose from 61% to 78%."
• Give estimates with uncertainty, as in Statistics for Researchers.
• Report results that didn't support your hypothesis, too.

Discussion: interpret, in layers

1. Restate the main finding in one or two sentences.
2. Compare with previous work: agree, disagree, and why.
3. Explain possible reasons, clearly marked as interpretation ("One explanation is...").
4. Limitations (next lesson).
5. Implications and what should be done next.

A useful habit

Read your results section and highlight every word of interpretation ("suggests", "because", "important"). Move most of them to the discussion.

RememberResults: what you saw. Discussion: what you think it means. Keep them apart, so readers can judge both.