2. Top ten fears of Americans
1) Public Speaking
2) Heights
3) Insects
4) Financial Problems
5) Deep Water
6) Sickness
7) Death
8) Flying
9) Loneliness
10) Dogs
3. Why do you need to speak?
Publications lag 1-2 years behind discovery
Talks at scientific meetings are current!!
Your future job depends on talks
You are evaluated by everyone as student
Your talks reflect on advisor
You will give candidate talks
Interviewers make conclusions in first 3
minutes
6. Outline
Introduction
Experimental
Results
Discussion
Conclusions
Future Work
Don’t overuse “gee whiz
effects”
Make sure material is
relevant
Use simple backgrounds
Use “normal” fonts
At least 18 pt (24 better) –
this text is 20 pt
Use “normal” colors
Do not use red and green
as contrasting colors
Only use for emphasis
Check before using!!!
Don’t use this outline!!!
45 wasted seconds
Normal: 5
Red/Green
Color Blind: 2
7. Outline
Before you start preparing your talk
Know your audience
Know the length of your talk
Know the style of your talk
Preparing the talk
Choosing and organizing the content
Preparing slides
Don’t overdo methods part of talk
Giving the talk
Grab and hold audiences attention
General information
8. Know your audience
How large will the group be?
Experts
Eliminate introductory material
Can be much more focused on the “interesting”
results
Novices
Assume your audience is intelligent but knows
nothing
80% of material should be introductory
Mixed
Most difficult
60% of material should be introductory
9. Length of talk
12-15 minutes
Contributed conference talks
Most difficult!!
Limit talk to 10 minutes
Only make 2-3 points
30 minutes
Invited conference talks
Journal club presentations
Limit talk to 20 minutes
60 minutes
Invited talks
Special seminars
Limit talk to 50 minutes
10. Know the style of your talk
Persuasive
Instructional
This talk!!
Informative
Normal for scientific meetings
Formal or informal?
Hard to time informal
11. Choosing and organizing the
content
What are trying to tell audience?
Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, tell
them what you told them
2-3 points for 15 minute talks
3-5 points for 30 minute talks
4-6 points for 1 hour talks
Write a basic outline
Make a rough draft with slides
Figure out how many slides you can use
Slides without graphics should be up for at least 30 sec
Slides with graphics should be up for at least 1 min
Keep it simple, stupid!!!!!
Cut what is not necessary
12. Preparing slides with text
Use white or light color backgrounds
Don’t use lists with more than 6 items
Break into multiple slides
Don’t use complete sentences
Try to keep list items to 6 words or less
(unlike this one!!!)
Don’t use abbreviations or acronyms
13. Preparing slides with graphics
Graphics add to
viewer retention
Try to avoid large
lists
Keep graphics simple
Use white or light
colored backgrounds
10% of male
population color blind
Make ALL text
readable
0 20 40 60
Recall (%)
Audience
Retention
Hear and See
See
Hear
14. Talking about human error
Know your audience
Intro physics students
Know the length of your talk
10 minutes
Know the style of your talk
Informative
Choosing and organizing the content
Space travel
What are trying to tell audience?
2-3 points for 15 minute talks
Humans make mistakes
Units are important
Don’t “make” your answer agree with expectations
Figure out how many slides you can use
Try to limit to 2 slides with text (beginning and end) and 5 or 6 with
graphics
Keep it simple (and interesting), stupid!!!!!
15. Human errors and space
program
Space program driven by scientists
Humans make mistakes
Many disasters caused by human error
Never forget units in your calculations
Don’t “make” your answer agree with
expectations
16. Space Program Failures
Project Mercury had a FORTRAN syntax
error such as DO I=1.10 (not 1,10).
Gemini V 100mi landing error, program
ignored orbital motion around sun
Atlas-Agena software missing hyphen;
$18.5M rocket destroyed
Aries with $1.5M payload lost: wrong
resistor in guidance system
NASA HESSI shake test 10 times too
strong, damaging spacecraft
17. Appollo 13
Tank 2 Salvaged from Apollo 10
was accidentally dropped 2”
Switch designed to run at 28 V
Apollo 13 “upgraded” to 65 V
Switch burned into open position
– O tank reached 1000° F and
1000 psi
18. Delta II spacecraft
January 17, 1997
$55 million dollar
rocket
$40 million dollar
new generation GPS
satellite
“Steering” error
19. Titan 4A spacecraft
Second most
expensive accident
August 12, 1998
$1 billion ??? Payload
Top secret
communications
intelligence satellite
Battery power lost
momentarily
Veered off course
Intentionally destroyed
20. Space shuttle challenger
Most expensive space
accident
Jan 28, 1986
$2B lost (along with
seven crew members)
O-Ring failure (cold o-
rings didn’t seal and
were burned by H-O
mixture)
Roger Boisjoly sent
memos out before
21. Approaching scientific problems
Formulate problem
Try to find solution
Measure
Carefully document findings (use units!)
Compare expected value and result
If different, why? (explore all options!)
Computers don’t always give right answer
22. NASA: Human error caused loss of Mars orbiter
November 10, 1999
Web posted at: 2:25 p.m. EST (1925 GMT)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Failure to convert English measures to metric values
caused the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter, a spacecraft that smashed into the
planet instead of reaching a safe orbit, a NASA investigation concluded Wednesday.
An investigation board concluded that NASA engineers failed to convert English
measures of rocket thrusts to newton, a metric system measuring rocket force.
One English pound of force equals 4.45 newtons. A small difference between the two
values caused the spacecraft to approach Mars at too low an altitude and the craft is
thought to have smashed into the planet's atmosphere and was destroyed.
The board found that the error went undetected in ground-based computers. Also, the mission navigation's team had an
imperfect understanding of how the craft was pointed in space. Additionally, the mission navigation team, the report said, was
overworked and not closely supervised by independent experts.
The Mars Climate Orbiter was launched December 11, 1998, and began its long journey toward the red planet. Along the way,
engineers on the ground sent instructions to the craft to fire rockets to correct its path toward Mars. It was in these rocket firings that
the error occurred.
Illustration of the Mars Climate Orbiter
Mars orbiter
23. Conclusions
Space program driven by scientists
Humans make mistakes
Many disasters caused by human error
Never forget units in your calculations
Almost all answers in physics use units!!
Use SI units when possible
Don’t “make” your answer agree with
expectations
Mars orbiter could have been saved
Computers are only as smart as the programmer
24. Why did I show this?
Good example of choosing graphics to
enhance points
Only tried to get across 3 points
I placed at the 20 minute mark
Average attention span of alert audience
25. Principles of an effective talk
Communicate your arguments and evidence
Persuade your audience that what you say is true
Be interesting and entertaining
Grab and hold audience’s attention
26. Why use
graphics?
Picture is worth many
words
In this case 700
Color would enhance
The medium allows
use of graphics
Maximized retention
5x higher with sight
and sound
Properly cite material
Edward R. Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative
Information. Graphics Press (2001)
27. Making a decent figure
1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
0.01
0.1
1
Las Vegas
Washington State
Population
(millions)
Year
1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
0.01
0.1
1
Las Vegas
Washington State
Population
Bad Better
28. More on graphics
Only use equations if
absolutely necessary
If you use equations
Slow down
Talk through step by
step
Explain relevence
29. Giving the best possible talk
Make eye contact
Don’t have nervous tendencies
Pacing, bobbing, waving arms, jingling coins, etc.
Hold pointer still
Don’t point directly at overhead on projector
Enunciate
Make yourself slow down if necessary
Avoid “uh”, “like”, “um”, “okay” etc
Be enthusiastic
Don’t block the screen
Project as high as possible
30. Giving the best possible talk
(cont)
Face the audience
Do not read what is on your
overheads verbatim
Never allow a blank screen to
flash by
However, don’t leave a slide up too
long – put a black slide up if
necessary
Try to relax
Can be difficult
Do NOT go over allotted time
Don’t end with “I guess that’s it”
Will get cut off at meetings
31. Know your material
Practice, practice, practice
Focus on communicating, not
performing
Humor good, but this isn’t stand up
Keep it simple
Prepare key phrases
Okay to write out material first
Write down the point to make for each
slide
If you don’t have a point, eliminate
slide!!!
Stay on track
Small digressions fine (shows you are
paying attention to audience)
It takes three
weeks to
prepare a
good ad-lib
speech
32. More advice
Bring a copy of your slides if
giving a PowerPoint
presentation
Fill the screen
Don’t cover up portions of
overheads
Don’t argue with questioners
Practice, practice, practice
Practice with slides
Find someone to listen
Record presentation
Video
Microsoft Producer
33. Conclusions
Preparation is crucial
Graphics enhance retention
Be relaxed and (try to) keep audience
attention
Finish on time
The more you practice, the better you
will get
34. More material
Go on Google and try “scientific talk” or
“scientific presentation”
Physics Today articles
ONR article
10 Commandments to give a bad talk
I will make this presentation available
on my web site