Comments on: A long list of interesting stuff

By: Ron19

Ron19 — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 07:28:27 +0000

Drilling down from David Foster #10 I remembered something about my senior year as a Statistics major.
I would read the text, sit in class taking notes, mostly a copy of what the professor wrote on the board, do the homework. For the midterm and final, I would skim through the book. I didn’t review most of my notes; in fact, usually I have never looked at them since pencil touched paper.
This was very unlike me, but during my senior year, I made the Dean’s List for the first time. And the second time.
Having given a few presentations myself, with and without a computer projector, I know that the two most important things about a presentation are:
1. Care about your topic as it relates to your audience
2, Know your topic thouroughly
Bookworm, one of the reasons I find your blog so interesting, is your depth and breadth of knowledge. You keep a lot of very intelligent readers coming back for more. Same for your commenters.

By: David Foster

David Foster — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 04:17:08 +0000

Just for fun...here's a presentation (P/P, I assume, although the tool isn't really specified) in which a BCG consultant analyzes romance.

By: David Foster

David Foster — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 04:14:11 +0000

It is certainly *possible* to give an excellent PowerPoint presentation...I like to believe that I've done so on many occasions...but the vast majority of the world's P/P presentations are pretty dismal. See Margaret Soltan's PowerPoint Pissoff for some interesting posts on this topic.

By: Spartacus

Spartacus — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 03:32:25 +0000

Many wise points above about avoiding excessive complexity with PowerPoint. But, for learning the ropes anyway, I’ve been impressed with the quality of instruction on other software at lynda.com, and they appear to have quite a few courses on PowerPoint.

By: Ron19

Ron19 — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 01:52:56 +0000

Comparison of murder rates, Chicago vs. NY:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/29/us-usa-crime-murder-idUSBRE8BR0LV20121229?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews&rpc=76

Reading this article, I was struck/inspired by an idea for a new type of ban:

Assault City – more than 1 million residents
Semi-Automatic City – more than 100,000 residents
Handgun City – more than 10,000 residents

I grew up in a “Fist” City – less than 10,000 residents, and we just didn’t have this kind of violence at all. All non-natural deaths were due to accidents only, not anything intentional.

We need to ban any weapon-type (more than 9,999 residents) city.

The President is doing things to ban suburbs and “persuade” the suburbanites to move their money back into the big city.

With all due respect, I think he’s got it backwards.

By: Kevin_B

Kevin_B — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 23:51:22 +0000

Bookworm,

On PowerPoint… I’ve done quite a few PowerPoint presentations so far, most/nearly all of them in the context of school/higher education though. I’ve defended two dissertations using a PowerPoint presentation.

I’d advise you to stay away from the animations, fades et cetera – (nearly) alltogether. They can be very distracting and they don’t really add to your message.

What I believe matters more with PowerPoint presentations, is that your slides have a good design/lay-out that looks neat, doesn’t distract from the message and is fitting for the subject discussed. I’d advise you to look into design/lay-out – the recent versions of Powerpoint (2007 and 2010) have quite a few templates already. You can change the colors and even adapt or make templates yourself. Something to look into, I’d say.

As Mr. Lemieux already said, use pictures (charts, graphs et cetera are a pretty good idea too) and bullet points. Always watch to not crowd a slide with too much text. If it looks like a slide is too full of text to you, it probably is.

On a final note, certainly if your presentation is lengthy or complicated, add a “contents” slide in the beginning and perhaps add what I call ‘structure slides’, that indicate at what point in your presentation/lecture you have come. It helps your viewers/listeners to keep on track with your presentation/lecture and the structure of and development of ideas/information in it.

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 22:31:29 +0000

What I liked about CCP’s power point screen presentation was that it went easy on the words (which we know the audience can’t see anyways), and were big on representative images and symbols. When they were talking about redesigning the outward appearances of stealth bombers, they gave a concept art picture of the new stealth bomber.
I don’t think a lot of people care about the animation or fading, since it just lags up the presentation and prevents clear flow information from slide to slide.

By: Danny Lemieux

Danny Lemieux — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 21:48:14 +0000

I am with Ron19 – throw in just one or two effects to make the presentation alive but, otherwise, its all a distraction from the message. Use bullet points and PICTURES!

By: Ron19

Ron19 — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 17:34:56 +0000

“…so I’m busy learning all about animations and fades.”

Please go easy on the animations and fades, etc. Not only do they distract from your message, but I get bored watching them and start to look for something else to do while I watch the presentation. Like work on cell phone text messages or a favorite app.

By: Marica

Marica — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 15:14:53 +0000

I recommend adding Kevin D. Williamson’s “Regulating the Militia” to the list: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/336529/regulating-militia-kevin-d-williamson
Huh. I’m having a hard time pasting a snippet. Sorry.