You design and perform an experiment in order to test your hypothesis or find the relation between two variables; however, the data that you collect during your experiment may not be conclusive. In other words you may look at the data and find random changes.

If the data is conclusive and has no unexpected variation, you will have a discussion like this:

The data that I collected during my 30 days experiment clearly shows that the rate of growth in radish plant increases by increase in temperature, while the temperature is between 5ºC and 40ºC.

Now you should provide some suggestions for future research. This is an example:

Since I only tested the growth of radish plant, I cannot conclude that all other plants will also follow the same growth pattern. Similar experiments must be performed on other plants in order to find out how is the growth rate of other plants affected by the temperature. Other experiments are also required to test other temperature ranges. For example a temperature range of 0ºC up to 65º must be tested on all plants. The rate of plant growth may decline after a certain temperature.

If the data is not conclusive and contains unexpected variations, your discussion may look like this:

The data that I collected during my 30 days experiment is not conclusive. At higher temperatures some plants died and some others grow better. A close observation showed that one of the plants may have died as a result of some infections in the plants root. Another plant may have had lower growth rate at higher temperature because of insufficient water. It seems that in higher temperatures plants also require more water. If the plant is in the ground, it may pull water from adjacent soil, however this does not happen in a pot. In general 7 of my plants showed that plants can grow more in higher temperatures.

Now you should provide some suggestions for future research. This is an example:

The fact that I only used 10 plants for 10 different temperatures has made it impossible for me to draw a firm conclusion. I think it would be better to use 30 plants for 10 different temperatures (3 plants for each specific temperature). In this way I could calculate the average growth rate of 3 plants and use it in my results for each temperature. I could also eliminate any sample that may die as a result of an infection. Following are my suggestions for future experiments:

1. The effect of temperature on plant growth must be experimented on all different plants.
2. A wider temperature change must be used in such experiments.
3. Three or more sample must be used for each specific temperature.
4. Larger pots must be used, so plants will have access to more soil and more water if needed.

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