Better Scientific Presentations

I found this video in a blog last week. If you have been into a scientific conference,  "you will not be able to resist the irony of this short video. " Have you experienced presentations like this?  Does your presentation look that this? Enjoy.   

In this quick tutorial I show different ways to upscale an image an how to do it using gimp.  Last Wednesday I watched a presentation from Israeli presentation designer Jan Schultink where among other things, he talked about avoiding stretch images. You might know this case. You have a small image and want to make it bigger, so you pull the image handles but the image's proportions are not kept constant. To re-size an image keeping its proportions constant, press the Shift key and drag the handles. However you should not up-size an image. As a good practice, always use images that have at least the size height or width of your canvas (typically 1024×768). If you want to size the image in it full size and still it is some pixels short, you can use a black background to make it appear full size. Sometimes good practices are not real practices and you might yourself forced to use an up-sized image.  Something like this (click below to see in original size and see the resul...

The saying goes that the devil is in the detail, and in scientific presentations is this certainly the case. Sadly, all too often students, researchers and professors run over their audiences with too much detail. If everything is important, then nothing is important. If you provide too much detail, you will decrease the contrast of your talk, making it monotonous, losing your main point.  Short presentations, that is, 20 minute talks plus Q&A should be about --what I call-- vision: one solid point supported by two, maximum three arguments. Leave the detail for the report, article or even a book. Left: Clear contrast between your vision and the surroundings. Right: Tough to differentiate details from the surroundings Clarity, not detail should characterized short talks. If you suspect your are giving too much detail, chances are you have not defined your core message. In this case, you need to review who is your audience and why is it they are coming to see you. The fact th...

Following the using text in slides spirit of the past weeks, in this post I share some of quotes  I have gathered over the past year I learned about the use of quotes in presentations reading Guy Reynold's Presentation Zen.  There are many reasons why you would like to use quotes in your presentations. Here are a few: They can summarize a point in a couple of words.  They can add credibility to your point.  Somebody said it better. They can help you transition to your next point. They make you look smart.  They capsule high amount of knowledge in few words. As a tip, I would suggest to read the quote to your audience. It is one of those few times where reading a slide is a good thing. Also remember that the shorter the quote, the better. And as James Humes writes, try to use quotes of famous people as much as possible.  I have seen some people using quotes in scientific and academic fields.  Here are some of the ones I have collected. "Inno...

In part I I talked about the shape of the text in slides. In part II I want to address the content. There are two basic questions. One is, when is the use of words better than the use of pictures? And the other, how to effectively use words in pictures? Let me kick off with the diagram below that I found in Wikipedia and remixed. On question that putting the information shown here into a written form would take more time to process. This is the point that the director of the Data Visualization at the University of New Hampshire, Colin Ware, makes. According to Mr. Ware, hierarchical relationships are most effective presented in a structured diagram (Graphics 1, Text 0). Now take a look at the diagram below. It is called a flowchart, and it is used to graphical display an algorithm. In this case computing the factorial of n, n!. In case you wonder n! = 1 x 2 x ... x n. The pseudocode of this flowchart would be something like this:  read n f = 1, m = 1 mark: f = f*m if(...

Once again a presentation Guru from TED! Though I start to have mixed feelings about TED, I have to admit there are great presenters. Julian Treasure is one of them. His job description is exotic, he is a Sound Consultant. Enjoy watching!

In February 2011, I mentioned the film The King's Speech . Finally, yesterday I had the chance to see it. Here are three things I learned.   Two days ago the DVD of The King's Speech was released here in Germany. I got the 2-DVD edition yesterday and watched it. It is a good film and Colin Firth, who plays King George VI, together with Geoffrey Rush (The King's speech therapist) are superb. The film focuses on the unlikely friendship between these two characters rather than in the King's speech problem. Still, I think the film touches an important point: Communication is important, but without character is superfluous. Some historical background. George VI is the father of Queen Elizabeth II and brother of King Edward VIII. Their father, King George V, dies in early 1936 as the World War II is breaking. The elder son of King George V, David, becomes King Edward VIII but abdicates in less than a year in favor of a woman. His younger bother, Albert, becomes King Geor...