Making presentations - Mikel

The presentation tools we choose to work with should at minimum not harm the content. PP disrupts and trivializes evidence. Word processing is better than PP when it comes to serious presentations. The future good technical reporting tool will focus on evidence analysis and display, good quality statistical graphics and tables, scientific notation and typography,spellcheck, within document editing, slide manager for talks,etc. The perfect paper handouts should be of size A3 folded in half to make 4 pages. This could show content equivalent of 50 to 250 PP slides. A lot of work needs to be put in making these handouts because it demonstrates to the audience that you are responsible and seek to leave permanent traces and have consequences. It should not have just a list of bullets on slides. A serious presentation might well begin with that 4-pager or with a concise briefing paper that everyone should read. Writing sentences forces presenters to be smarter, and those presentations will make consumers smarter as well. Beautiful Evidence ET

The techniques of disinformation design, when reversed, reinforce strategies of presentation. The audience should know beforehand what you will do. Some practical advice for giving a talk or paper. 1-Near the beginning of the presentation tell the audience: What the problem is Why the problem is important What the solution to the problem is. If you are not able to formulate a clear statement of the problem, then your content is deficient.Repetition helps people learn, remember and understand, so repeated variations on the same theme will only clarify and develop an idea. 2-To explain complex ideas or data use the PGP method:

 	Particular	General	Particular

Choose a particular instance of your problem and explain it, then describe the general architecture, and then reinforce it with another particular. This way your argument is more credible. Your talks should be clear and rich in content so that the rate of information transfer between you and the audience maximizes. High-resolution methods are useful: 3-Give everyone in the audience a piece of paper with material related to your presentation. That could be pictures, diagrams, data tables, research methods, references etc. Permanent and portable paper has more credibility than projected images. 4-Analyse the details of your presentation and then master those details. Rehearsals are the single best way of improving one’s lecture work.Practice in front of a mirror, video camera or turn off the video and listen to the sound. 5-Show up early because something good is bound to happen. This way you can look the place over, you can recover from a problem and greet people as they gradually arrive. 6-Finish early. You will never hear complaints of ending early. Visual Explanations ET

Good design has two key elements: Graphical elegance is often found in simplicity of design and complexity of data. Do not traffic with the trivial. The basic structures for showing data are the sentence, the table, the graphic, and two of these should often be combined. The sentence is a poor way to show comparisons within the data. Pie charts should never be used as they fail to order numbers and have very low data-density. Tables are the best way to show exact numerical values. A table is better than bar charts. For sets of highly labeled numbers, a wordy data graphic works well. Words and pictures belong together.It is nearly always helpful to write little messages on the plotting field, so that the eye is not required to to move back and forth between textual material and the graphic. Tables and graphics should be run into the text whenever possible. Words on and around graphics are highly effective. Very often the data will suggest the shape of the graphic, in that case follow it, otherwise graphics should tend toward the horizontal, greater in length than height. A shaded, high contrast display might be better than the floating snake. The writing on the graphics should be done horizontally as well. Along with a good idea and a timely problem, there needs to be a good method. 1-Placing the data in an appropriate context for assessing cause and effect. 2-Making quantitative comparisons. 3-Considering alternative explanations and contrary cases 4-Assessment of possible errors in the numbers reported in graphics.