How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Tiffani L. Williams Department of Computer Science Texas A&M University http://faculty.cs.tamu.edu/tlw
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations
Part I Introduction
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Introduction
Why Do We Give Presentations?
Persuasive: Convincing your audience to follow a particular course of action. Instructional: Showing others how to perform a specific task (e.g., laboratory demonstration). Informative: Presenting new findings of information.
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Introduction
What Makes Giving a Presentation Difficult?
One chance for the audience to hear. The audience cannot look up background information. The audience is restricted to the speaker’s pace. Success is dependent upon the speaker’s ability to deliver. Training on how to give scientific presentations is often not provided.
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations
Part II Overcoming Our Fears
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Overcoming Our Fears
Activity #1
What are your fears when giving a scientific presentation?
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Overcoming Our Fears
My Fears
Losing the audience’s attention. Lacking sufficient material. Appearing too simple. Presenting work to a mixed audience.
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Overcoming Our Fears
A successful presentation starts with a confident speaker.
Stay calm and relaxed. Know your material. Practice giving your presentation. You have a valuable message to share!
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations
Part III Structure: The Strategy You Choose
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How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Structure: The Strategy You Choose Maps
Maps and Presentations
Every map has an intended audience. Maps are defined by what they include but are often more revealing in what they exclude. It is impossible to show everything! No matter how hard you try to include everything, there will always be something missing. However, whatever you decide to present should tell a story.
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Structure: The Strategy You Choose The Audience
What Story Will You Tell?
Remember, you will never be able to tell the full story. Instead, you must select the pieces that are the most relevant. But, how do you select what to present?
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Structure: The Strategy You Choose The Audience
Activity #2
Imagine that you are packing for a trip. What will you bring?
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Structure: The Strategy You Choose The Audience
I Need More Information!
What is my destination? What is my purpose (e.g., vacation, business trip) How long will I be gone?
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Structure: The Strategy You Choose The Audience
Packing and Presentations
You wouldn’t pack for a trip without knowing the destination and the intended purpose of the trip. Similarly, you should never give a presentation without considering your audience and their needs.
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Structure: The Strategy You Choose The Audience
Thinking About Your Audience
What does the audience know? What are they unlikely to know? What kind of talk would the audience find appealing?
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Structure: The Strategy You Choose The Audience
My Audience
Composed mostly of students. Has given or seen a scientific presentation. Interested in learning about giving effective presentations. May have been strongly encouraged (or forced) to attend by their advisor.
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations
Part IV Sample Presentation
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Sample Presentation Audience Expectations
What Does the Audience Want to Know?
What’s the Problem? (Introduction) What are You Doing? (Experiment and Method) What Have You Found and What Does It Means? (Results and Discussion) Take-Home Message (Conclusions) Who Did and Paid for the Work? (Acknowledgements)
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Sample Presentation Outline slide
Get rid of the outline slide!
Motivation Your Algorithm or Methodology Experimental Results Conclusions Future Work
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Sample Presentation Reaching Multiple Audiences
Intro
First Major Topic
Second Major Topic
Ending time
Nontechnical
General Technical
Specialist
depth
Figure: You can’t please everyone all of the time. Adapted from The Craft of Scientific Presentations by Michael Alley.
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Sample Presentation What’s the problem?
TGCTA
TGGTC CGATA AGCTC
ACCGC
AGCTT
TCGCG
CAGTT
Figure: Phylogeny:Illustration.
CAGTG
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Sample Presentation What’s the problem?
Phylogeny From the Tree of the Life Website, University of Arizona
Orangutan
Gorilla
Chimpanzee
Human
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Sample Presentation What’s the problem?
What’s so hard about reconstructing a tree?
We can’t verify the answer! We are trying to predict the past. The number of possible trees for n organisms (or taxa) is (2n − 5)!! = 1 × 3 × 5 × 7 × · · · (2n − 5). How many possible hypotheses are there for 500 taxa?
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Sample Presentation What’s the problem?
Number of trees for 500 taxa 101152636853253307474012545536814184545953595103177817441326760 575354540027354239923185120850729281452188845672454906078405199 548334663555835357748979700404888152382777235828789778883827083 879520379654335442692118284017668933765146297741290321491422188 461934211322520490553755930128491420943083731473702853911575459 092790187541739039779539968260469372709754907153967724213213301 619211242677711757042116860278030246424393282604683928277544702 004024525439745312625940855936045351781359433925232787668240389 543059720773515213084928436546402475634030885682876051282569771 792020997072230898150513179396946394522142159208349384664346962 256120104483730916485543102772698545449577536942796787841027981 718342034235251080912363733252495409554975559313272782465380621 055314336272287166870064159034339277014925661499965120537691592 061432825699618256792894495401900633880555360239418241295638642 828064143651877071620389850413570868327006823979839417007571891 860810831375937653051279717486968104181402271737999015446125297 308847695505977363634413078780761890937449555118036210351806866 727116790075717314422532435108543175076637978946516065697371580 159930481479731383058494656194406090860578395451199918916887394 920259212050615153793334686404827729255644086503451717362622730 433940887451171875
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Sample Presentation What’s the problem?
What do we do now?
The problem isn’t going away. Grand Challenge problem: Tree of Life Evolutionary history of all known species on the planet (estimates between 10 to 100 million)
We need heuristics! Recast as a optimization problem. Optimization criterion of interest: maximum parsimony
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Sample Presentation What’s the problem?
Remainder of Presentation
What am I Doing? (Experiment and Method) What Have I Found and What Does It Means? (Results and Discussion) Take-Home Message (Conclusions) Who Did and Paid for the Work? (Acknowledgements)
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations
Part V Visual Aids: Your Supporting Cast
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Visual Aids: Your Supporting Cast Software
Presentation Software
PowerPoint The most frequently used software for creating presentations. “Power corrupts. PowerPoint absolutely corrupts.” – Edward Tufte
Keynote (only available on Mac OS X) Latex-based tools Prosper Beamer (used for this presentation)
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Visual Aids: Your Supporting Cast Software
Keep It Short and Simple (K.I.S.S.) Some people cannot resist the temptation to assert their mathematical superiority. Consider the following equation 2
2
ln(e) + sin x + cos x =
inf X n=0
and its more “trivial” form 1 + 1 = 2.
2−n
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Visual Aids: Your Supporting Cast Plots
n-gram, permuted
n-gram, unrelated
1.0 0.9
similarity score
0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 60
15
7
4
2
0.0 n
Figure: A poorly designed plot.
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Visual Aids: Your Supporting Cast Plots
n-perm, permuted
n-perm, unrelated
1.0 0.9
similarity score
0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 60
100
30
15
10
7
5
4
3
2
0.0 n
Figure: Another poorly designed plot.
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations
Part VI Delivery: It’s Showtime!
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Delivery: It’s Showtime!
Speech
Show enthusiasm. Speak freely. Speak clearly. Speak slower than you would in a normal conversation. Make sure you are speaking the audience’s language.
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Delivery: It’s Showtime! Stay on Track!
Don’t go over your allotted time!
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Delivery: It’s Showtime! Surviving the Discussion Period
Handling Questions You say: That’s a very interesting question. You mean: You obviously didn’t listen properly. You say: I’m glad you raised that point. You mean: I’ll say it again, so listen this time! You say: I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to that one. You mean: Why did you have to ask that? It’s irrelevant here. You say: Yes, the additional experiments you suggest are very appropriate. You mean: I don’t care about running more experiments. I simply want to graduate!
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Delivery: It’s Showtime! Surviving the Discussion Period
Don’t forget ...
You are the expert! A few people ask questions to be obnoxious. Many people ask questions because they are interested in your work. The sign of a good presentation is a lively discussion afterwards.
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations
Part VII Wrap-Up
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations Concluding Remarks
Summary
The key to an effective presentation is concern for your audience. Don’t overwhelm them, but don’t underwhelm them either. Say what you need to say and sit down. Everyone’s internal clock is ticking. Relax, stay calm, and remember you are the expert!
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations
References
Michael Alley, The Craft of Scientific Presentations: Critical Steps to Succeed and Critical Errors to Avoid, 2003. Claus Ascheron and Angela Kickuth, Make Your Mark in Science, 2005. Edward R. Tufte, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, 2003. Peter Turchi, Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer, 2004. Justin Zobel, Writing for Computer Science, 2004.
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations
Thank you for your attention
How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations