Give a persuasive talk*
Inspired by a good book on public speaker, in this post I offer some advice on how to give a persuasive scientific talk. It turns out the ideal way of organizing a talk has been laid out by the Greeks. I used the updated version from Jay Heinrichs. I recently read that the format of a modern talk came be traced all the way back to the Greeks, in particular to Cicero. According to him, a persuasive talk follows the sequential set of steps: Invention Arrangement Style Memory Delivery Memory seems to be odd nowadays, so I would update it to Rehearsal. Let's start with Invention. Invention. An empty canvas or page can be scary for fine art painters or writers, but what is worse is after the first stroke lands on the canvas or the first word on the page, a world of possibilities shrinks dramatically. After the second stoke or word there are no more possibilities, the path has been laid out. This is no different in scientific talks, though here ...