How to Give a Good Research Talk

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How to Give a Good Research Talk

• Sally A. Goldman
• Washington University in St. Louis
• January 30, 2004
• Based on a similar talk by Patrick Winston of
  M.I.T. and one by Ken Goldman

2
Why Are We Here?

• For your work to have significant impact, others
  need to understand it
• When on the job market the ability to give a good
  talk is crucial
• Giving a good talk is a skill you can learn

3
Goals of a Technical Talk

• Keep audiences interest and attention
• Communicate key ideas of your work
• Inspire the audience to learn more about your
  work
• Non-Goals
• Overwhelm people with how smart you are
• Expect audience to leave with a deep
  understanding of your work

4
Always Start with a Promise(motivate the
audience to listen)

• In this talk, you will learn how to
• Plan a talk,
• Prepare a talk
• Practice a talk
• Present a talk

5
Make the Promise Catchy

• The Goal of this Talk
• Learn the Four Ps of giving talks
• Plan
• Prepare
• Practice
• Present

6
Use Diagrams Wherever Possible(theyre more
informative and memorable)

• The Goal of This Talk
• Learn the Four Ps of giving talks

7
Plan the Talk

• Know your audience
• Who has spoken before you?
• How long is your talk scheduled?
• What key ideas to you want to get across?

PLAN
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Structuring Your Talk

• Introduction
• Body
• High-level summary of a few key ideas
• Tell a story
• Technicalities
• Conclusion

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The Introduction

• Define the Problem
• Minimize use of terminology
• Use pictures/examples/props
• Motivate the audience (give a carrot)
• Why is the problem important?
• How does it fit into a larger picture?
• Succinctly state your contributions
• Provide a road-map (outline)

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The Body

• State key results (at a high-level)
• Focus on a central, exciting concept
• Explain significance of your work
• Sketch methodology
• Keep it high-level
• Provide intuition behind complex ideas
• Gloss over most (if not all) technical details
• Discuss related work

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The Technicalities

• Discuss a key result in more depth
• Guide audience through difficult ideas
• Give overview of approach
• Show an example
• Go through main steps of key result
• It is this portion of your talk that typically
  grows in 50 minute talk

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The Conclusion

• Provide a coherent synopsis
• Review key contributions and why they are
  important
• Explain implications of your results
• Discuss open problems/future work
• Indicate the talk is over. For example, Are
  there any questions?

13
Prepare Your Talk

• Play with an open hand
• Decide what you want to say
• Say less
• Explain necessary background
• Have a clear point of each slide
• Only include what youll talk about
• Make good use of color
• Plan on 1.5 to 2 minutes per slide

PREPARE
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Use Repetition

• Tell them what youre going to tell them. Tell
  them. Then tell them what you told them
• 20 of your audience at any given time is
  thinking about something else

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Use Short Bullet Items

• It is not necessary to write everything youre
  going to say on the slide. In fact, its
  distracting because the audience reads the slide
  instead of listening to you. The visuals become
  cluttered, and people miss the main point. You
  also want to keep the font large enough so people
  can read it, and avoid spurious formatting
  changes and

distracting effects.
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Avoid Lots of Code

• boolean isBoredAudience()
• if ((linesOfCode gt 5)
• (text.font courier))
• return !point.isClear()
• else if (numDiagrams gt
• linesOfCode/3)
• return false
• return true

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Avoid Complex Text

• A length preserving indexing function f???? ?
  is a trapdoor function, if there exist a
  poly-time TM G, and a function h???? ? where

• f and h are computable in poly time,
• and,
• and

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Try to Avoid Textual Definitions

• A function f is a trapdoor function, if there
  exist a function h and a key generator G where

• f, h and G are computable in poly time
• M, Prob ( M (f (x )) x ) lt n k
• x, h (G (f ),f (x )) x

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(No Transcript)
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Show Pictures (speak the text)
Trapdoor Function f
f(x)
f is easy to compute
x
x
But hard to invert UNLESS you have the key
f(x)
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Common Mistakes

• Overload slides
• Include too many slides
• Use a font size less than 24 pt
• - This is 24 pt
• Try to give a core dump
• Have a transparency that introduces a point you
  are unsure of or dont want to get into

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Common Mistakes (cont)

• Present last minute results (they are probably
  wrong)
• Have way more slides than you could present (or
  multiple talks) that you decide how to use as you
  go
• Show complex equations or code
• Forgit to run a spel cheker

23
Practice the Talk

• Videotape yourself
• Time the talk!
• Find friends to critique you that have a
  background to match your audience
• Be ready to redo all of your slides after your
  first practice

PRACTICE
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Present the Talk Getting Ready

• Be EXCITED.
• Be nervous!
• Dress appropriately
• See the room where your talk will be

PRESENT
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Present the Talk Beginning

• Remind, dont assume
• Memorize the first sentence
• Dont start with a joke
• Speak slowly and with sufficient volume
• Make eye contact
• Be with the audience - Move around to break down
  the implicit barrier

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Present the Talk The Body

• Keep your main points in mind
• Point to things
• Be animated
• Talk about everything on the slide
• Dont read the slides
• Ask real and rhetorical questions to keep the
  audience engaged

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Present the Talk Conclusion

• Provide a coherent synopsis
• Review your key contributions
• Explain implications of your results
• Discuss future work
• Ask if there are questions
• End on time!

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Present the Talk Taking Questions

• I dont know is a reasonable answer
• If the answer is long, or if someone asks too
  many (or off-topic) questions, invite them to
  talk with you afterwards.
• Thank hecklers for their interesting points to
  think about and continue
• Prepare extra slides for anticipated questions

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Common Mistakes

• Talk to softly, mumble, speak in a monotone
  voice, or use um, ah,
• Read your slides
• Talk to the screen versus the audience
• Darken room (unless necessary) since it entices
  the audience to sleep
• Babble on when you have nothing to say

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Concluding Remarks

• Preparing a good talk takes time
• Take every opportunity you can to give talks
  youll get better with practice
• Apply the Four Ps of giving talks
• AND you will give better talks