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We would all like to have a job where we can indulge our imagination without any noise from the outside world or obligation for our reverie to have any impact on it. Science, engineering and mathematics are NOT where such jobs exist.
Scientific research can be summed up as C-cubed:
Communication is a learned skill and is usually done in the format of a 20 minute conference presentation of technical research and a 50 minute colloquium presentation of technical research plus its larger backdrop. (Giving a good talk can also be critical to getting a job so your motivation is not purely altruistic.)
Giving a good talk is a learned skill so the goal is to improve continually your presentations while (especially at the start of your career) avoiding making any really bad mistakes. It is most important to avoid certain mistakes which are guaranteed to make your talk a disaster (no matter how brilliant the other 19-1/2 minutes were).
The key in this learning process is to think back over all the talks you have heard: which were good (In particular, pick a topic that you completely understand and that you think is an exciting and important topic) , (and why), which were bad or boring (and why). The secrets are all there. This report gives a few pointers about how to avoid the biggest mistakes during your learning based upon my own experiences. If there is someone in your department who gives good talks, ask him or her what their secrets are (and email their answer to me please).
I will assume that you are giving a technical talk using an overhead projector. There is a current trend to use power-point. This can make your talk a lot better but it can also empty your talk of all scientific content. I suggest you start with the overhead then move to PowerPoint. Also, if you are using PowerPoint, be sure to bring a copy on transparencies in case there is a computer glitch. I will also assume it is a technical talk wherein you really want to communicate a scientific idea. There are also "Management Style" talks given where the speaker gives a fast overview of the efforts of a whole research group. You probably won't be giving one of these at the start of your career!
The first transparency should be prepared with a text editor and should contain:
Colors are very desirable. If you have one or two keywords in your title, print them in block letters and fill them in with a red (or other color marker). Use colors on every page to highlight the most important idea of that page.
If you have no idea what picture to include, just get a university logo and put it there. It's much better to relate your work to scientific trends in your field, large scale science, etc. through the picture. For example, a talk on thermal simulation of a tile could have a photo of the space shuttle inserted on page 1. The goal of this is to get as many people as possible interested in your topic immediately. If you have a very nice color graphic, it's well worth the 99 cents to have Kinko's color Xerox it onto a transparency. The most common error in talks is assuming that everyone automatically understands your problem or is interested in it!
A 20 minute talk means 5 transparencies of scientific interest or 4 plus some figures or schematics which are so clear as to be immediately understandable. If you need a sentence in your picture's caption then is counts as a page of text. This scales up with time, e.g., a 50 minute talk equals 12-13 transparencies. Each transparency must have between 8 and 14 lines on it, absolutely no more than 14 and preferably 8!
For a 20 minute talk, the first (non title) slide should be a problem statement, as nontechnical as possible. If space allows, list, in words, the essential fundamental difficulties in the problem and questions asked. The second transparency is a survey of the state of knowledge, list names, year and (nontechnically) what they did. The goal is not to survey everything but show that your work is the next logical and important step in the area.
For example, the slide might have a list like:
When citing a publication, do not use the abbreviation "et al". Professor Et or Dr Al might be in the audience. They might have been the person that really did the work. They might also be refereeing your next paper or grant proposal! Be courteous and list every author in full.
The third slide should be a statement of your principal result, the one to which you have been building up! Be careful how you do this though. You can only really state 2 of the 37 underlying assumptions of your theorem or experimental result. Pick the two key ones and summarize the others with statements like:
Be prepared, after your talk, to give a precise form of your result. Prepare an extra slide with all the conditions and only use it if someone asks about the other 35 assumptions.
If there is space remaining (if not this goes onto the last transparency), give a summary of your methodology, techniques and tools used. For example, your next slide might resemble:
Theorem.
(Under a regularity condition on the wood elements,)
The woodchuck chucking ability of a "generic" woodchuck is proportional
to latitude found.
Ingredients:
* Extensive field tests.
* Modeling and Simulation upon CMS Supercomputer.
* Duality argument in L.C.T.V.S.
If you're working in applied areas you need to delineate which parts are empirical and which can be rigorously justified.
A schematic or interesting example can follow on the last transparency together with a summary of your contributions (what did you do after all!).
If you violate any of these rules you will end your academic career.
A1: WRITE LARGE AND CLEARLY!!! 8-14 lines per transparency. Use colors whenever possible to draw peoples' eyes to the one key idea on that page.
A2: 20 MINUTES = 5 TRANSPARENCIES or 4 TRANSPARENCIES plus a few figures which don't require a lot of explanation. This scales linearly so 50 MINUTES = 10-13 TRANSPARENCIES.
A3: FOCUS: There isn't time for details. Your audience relies on you to identify the key ideas and present the big picture.
A4: NEVER Xerox a normal typed page onto a transparency.
A5: STRESS the geometry, use schematics.
A6: YOUR SLIDES SHOULD HAVE A LOGICAL STRUCTURE:
DE1: ADHERE strictly to rules A1-A8.
DE2: DON'T MUMBLE, DON'T AVOID YOUR AUDIENCE. Focus upon friendly or sympathetic-looking people. See if you can get someone to nod or smile. If someone in the audience appears hostile, don't continue eye contact with them, inviting an interruption, and don't let a hostile or indifferent attitudes affect you!
DE3: DON'T read from a script of a talk. Use a written version as a prompter not as a script.
DE4: DON'T LET YOUR NERVOUS HABITS UPSTAGE YOU! If you talk with your hands in your pockets, remove all change and keys before the talk.
DE5: DON'T GO TOO FAST. Your talk with transparencies should be paced as if you were writing them on the blackboard (practice your talk once as a "chalk talk").
DE6: DON'T FORGET TO MAKE YOUR POINTS: Four issues must be addressed in your talk:
DE7: DON'T ASSUME TECHNOLOGY WORKS! Go to the lecture room beforehand and try the machines. Make sure you are satisfied with the lighting, and know how to lower the screen, turn on the projector, to hook up your computer.
Q1: All questions:
Q2: Hostile Questions:
Repeat 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 above then don't look at that person again!
Don't get involved in a back and forth quibbling contest. Instead, offer
to discuss it later. As you keep your calm, the questioner
will look worse and worse and you will come off better and better.
Q3: If you don't understand the question, say so and ask to discuss it later.
Q4: Questions which are really long rambling statements:
Just let them talk themselves out, and then give a succinct
answer! For example:
Q: "But in 1906, I studied woodchuckery using (blah-blah-blah) and we found (blah-blah-blah). Why didn't you do it my way?"Say this with a smile, immediately call on someone else.A: "I considered that method. It is certainly valid but I took another approach."
Q5: Incredibly stupid questions:
These are much more common than hostile ones. Don't laugh or
ridicule the questioner. Try to explain why it doesn't apply but then relate
it to a good question, answer that and thank the questioner for bringing
up the topic. Dealing with these questions is harder than with hostile
questions.
Q6: If a question makes you nervous:
Anytime you feel nervous, take a deep breath, slow down, let out
half the air, bear down and begin talking. This will lower your
voice, slow it down and no one will even suspect you are nervous.
GT1: Your talk should be personal (show how you view the area). Be positive and look at the big picture. Don't assume though that anyone understands or cares about your problem. You must first relate it to something in which they are interested.
GT2: First do the universal aspects of the problem, then slightly more detailed aspects. Don't overestimate your audience. Try to begin with a phrasing of it that is so general that many people have seen special cases of it in their own work.
GT3:Stress the geometry; try to illustrate your key conditions with schematics.
GT4: It's good (though difficult) to involve the audience in a positive way at the start of the talk. A humorous anecdote from the history of the area, leading in to your work, is often a good way to begin.
GT5:(P.T. Barnum's maxim) "Tell them what you are going to say, say it, then tell them what you said." (I don't really know what this means but it is repeated so often that it must be important.)
GT6: Charisma: The more abstract and technical the subject the more important it is to use concrete terms and action words.
For example, compare the following presentation of Monte Carlo methods:
(Version 1): "The main program calls a random number generator with a specified distribution. The first or second index is incremented by one unit depending upon the subinterval to which the random number which is generated belongs"
(Version 2): "We roll a die (gesture). Depending upon the number that comes up, we jump one step North, South, East or West on the grid".
Charismatic people tend to use sensory words a lot (touch, feel, taste, smell, hear and see):
Using a concrete, sensory description of an idea is a good way to introduce preface or motivate a technical discussion.
GT7: Pacing: practice your talk so that it's paced correctly. You shouldn't have to jam everything into the last 5 minutes. Try to have something in the middle of your talk as a change of pace (to jar the sleepers from lethargy). Above all, don't drone on in a monotone, be a little unpredictable.
Remember that it's normal to be excited and a bit nervous before a talk. Be nervous, but avoid such things as taking fast in a high squeaky voice, shaking all over and distracting nervous gestures. Practicing your talk a few (e.g. 2) times is a very good way to overcome the worst of the effects of nervousness.
N1: Don't write on your slides or point to things on the transparency if you are nervous. If your hands are a little shaky, the projector will magnify their shakes onto the screen. Write on the nearby blackboard and point to your screen instead!
N2: Don't go back and recycle through your slides after each question.
N3: Focus only on friends (or friendly face) in the audience. Smile; enjoy your subject and the opportunity to talk about it.
N4: If you start to speak quickly or in a squeaky voice, take a deep breath, let out about half, bear down and begin speaking. This will slow and lower your voice.
N5: Repeat (N4) before answering every question. Begin your answer by explaining to the others in the audience why the question is interesting.
N6: Anticipate your nervous habits before your talk and do something to make them impossible. For example, if you are nervous and like to talk with your hands in your pockets, remove all your coins and keys beforehand. I recall attending one very good talk that was ruined because the speaker was jingling his keys in his pockets. Everyone sitting around me was discussing how much change he had ("What do you think-about a buck forty?") rather than the mathematics of the presentation.
N7: Preparing your slides. If you are giving an important talk and you are nervous about it, it is very easy to put too much information on each transparency. Here's one way to avoid that and yet have all you want to say at hand. First write your talk on paper (just like each sheet is a transparency). There will be way too much detail. Then practice your talk. As you do, underline on each page the things you stress. When you prepare your final transparencies, only put the underlined parts on them. Keep the original "script" next to the overhead projector to use as a prompter. Do not read off it though!
You can return to the ICAM Graduate Conference web page.