Better Scientific Presentations

Last week, Freddy left this comment on  On why I hate LaTeX/Beamer : We have to think something about the theorem issue. If it is a mathematical presentation, the most important contribution is indeed a theorem. Think about a math thesis presentation: most results will be theorems :( and I replied I agree that in a math presentations theorems have a big role. The question is how you present them. As University of Manchester Mathematics Professor Nicholas Higham in "Handbook of Writing for the Mathemetical sciences write" writes "When you write a slide, aim for economy of words. Chop sentences mercilessly to leave the bare minimum that is readily comprehensible." Think about it, people may take their theorems directly out of their latex articles and dump them into their beamer slides without further thought. That is that Beamer fosters, but ultimately it Beamer is just a tool. As I wrote on the post, the responsibility lies on the person using it.   Let me ...

Yeah, I keep (really) hating  LaTeX/Beamer. Thankfully, there is a better way to make slides with LaTeX on a WYSIWYG software. It is Scribus running LaTeX as a external tool. Here is how to get started. Yesterday I got a comment from wipeout on a remix of a math presentation I did in 2011. He asked if it could be done all in Beamer. I did research and ended writing this post. I have been using LaTeX for more than 10 years. It is a beautiful tool to typeset beautiful math. But LaTeX is neither a word processor, a desktop publishing tool, nor slideware. In words of its creator Producing good slides requires visual formatting, which means LaTeX is not well suited for the task.                                                                        – Leslie Lamport LaTeX/Beamer doesn't create the v...

In some presentations the use of mathematical formulas helps to amplify and clarify the message. In mathematics the use of the TeX's package Beamer is unfortunately widely spread. In this post I make a case to avoid using Beamer and instead use TeX to only produce snapshots of these formulas.   Seth Godin is an American entrepreneur and blogger on marketing of ideas in the digital age . Seth knows one of two things about presentations. He is an all-time TED favorite. He also wrote a booklet call Really Bad PowerPoint (click here to get it!) where he briefly talks about the birth, problematic, and possible solutions of the Death by PowerPoint. I strongly encourage you to read it. Bad presentations (aka bad PowerPoint) are all around, not only in sales, but also in education, science, and even in the military! Check out this article from the New York Times about use of PowerPoint in the US military. Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse you meet Beamer. If you...