Presentations

I want to share a story from my graduate school days. So, I used to get really excited when something finally worked and I had a couple friends that I would rush to with the latest discovery to share it with them. One of those friends, Justin Garvin, brought something to my attention once that was really helpful for me later in life. Let me show you what I mean, take a look at the chart below. See how cool it is? Wiggles, flat spots, something is related to something, they even cross at some point… Man, there is a lot going on!

But, you can probably guess why my buddy, Justin, was laughing at me. No matter how insightful I am, or careful in the analysis and work… Because no matter how much work or painstaking care I put into generating the data in this plot, it is garbage without axis titles or a label or just about any details to describe what in the world I was thinking!

Seriously, it may seem trivial but these days I’m extremely focused on the details of plots, figures, and background information to make sure that we haven’t made a mistake in the interpretation of any result we make. These days especially given the data at our fingertips, it is even easier to draw conclusions from completely unrelated information just because they happen to be produced in the same sequence or at the same time. Take a look at Tyler Vigen’s site if you need some practical examples.

So, I’ve mentioned practicing presentations in an earlier post. In fact, I have more research to do (thanks, Alex Monroe) on the topic of assertion-evidence presentations. Let me offer a couple suggestions about preparing for this because the little I know about A-E is in support of this. I’d use the same approach to drafts of reports and proposals as well.

Your presentations need to tell a message, so ask yourself when you prepare it whether it communicates the message you intended to present. If it can’t answer a straightforward question, then it’s probably wasting a lot of effort and time. But that is in the end. In preparation, I will usually dump more information into my presentation before trimming back to the relevant stuff. Besides, you should know your audience enough to agree on a common language to discuss your topic. So the boring introduction stuff can sometimes be extremely valuable when you don’t even realize that the introduction is where the disagreement or discovery is. So consider that when you make your presentation. I hope to have more examples soon to post.