The Elements of an Effective Presentation

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The Elements of anEffective Presentation

• Steve Horvath
• Biostatistics, Human Genetics
• UCLA
• www.ph.ucla.edu/biostat/people/horvath.htm

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Start with a joke.

• If you have not been introduced, briefly
  introduce yourself.
• My name is
• My job title is
• My research interest is
• Relate to the audience by mentioning other
  speakers, the city, the weather, or a relevant
  joke.
• Avoid self-deprecating remarks or risk ending
  like Al Gore.

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Briefly mention the content of your presentation.

• Dress Code
• Professional Posture
• Contents of slides
• Style
• Humor, animation, and colors

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Dress business-casual

• Dont underdress unless you are brilliant and
  want to make the point that you are brilliant
• Overdressing can freak out the audience
• Especially creative types resent ties
• Women dont dress sexy, avoid make up and go for
  the elegant look
• Men dress as fancy as your wardrobe permits
• and use deodorant.

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The title contains the main message of the slide

• Since most people are flooded with information
  sum up your message in the title
• Use at most 5 bullets
• Use large font sizes (at least 20) and preferably
  Tahoma

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The purpose of your talk is to induce the
audience to read your paper

• Dont bore the audience with technical math
  proofs
• refer to papers instead
• Use intuitive examples to explain the main
  theoretical findings
• Report exciting data applications of your
  statistical methods

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When explaining a chart, always start with
explaining the axes!
Y axis is
Sum up the message X is correlated with Y
Xaxis is.
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USE CLEAR SEPARATOR SLIDES TO SEPARATE TOPICS
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NEVER show lack of confidence.

• Avoid talking about things that you dont really
  understand.
• However, in reality this cannot be avoided in
  todays highly interactive projects.
• Avoid saying I am just a especially since you
  probably know more about your project than anyone
  in the audience.
• The audience often gets aggressive if they sense
  that they have to listen to speaker who does not
  feel comfortable standing in front of them.
• If you cannot answer a question, say The
  response will take too long at this point. Let me
  get back to your after the talk.
• Or I have to look into this after the lecture
  but this is not an essential point for the
  remainder of my presentation.

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NEVER lose your professional posture when dealing
with a difficult audience.

• Briefly address their questions and then move on.
  
• If need be say Please abstain from further
  questions and comments until the end of the
  presentation since your aggressive questioning
  disrupts the flow of this presentation
• Always finish your presentation even if you have
  to fast forward to your conclusion slide.
• The audience always roots for a speaker under
  fire and for the more junior person.
• Learn from presidential candidates.
• NEVER YELL (into the microphone)
• Never Cry in Front of the Audience
• drink some water, cough or accidentally drop
  the microphone if you have to
• Dont hit anybody since there are too many
  witnesses ?

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USE CLEAR SEPARATOR SLIDES TO SEPARATE TOPICS
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AVOID EXCESSIVE USE OF COLORS AND ANIMATION

• People with exciting ideas do not need exciting
  slides.
• This is science and not an art exhibit.
• AVOID ANIMATION
• Cute but very distracting
• Use colors and animation only when dealing with
  marketing people

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However it is a good idea to insert humorous
slides

• But make sure to test whether it is really funny.
• Dont forget that it is incumbent on you to
  entertain the audience

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Avoid commas, periods and semicolons

• Water can turn into ice ice can turn into snow.
• Commas, periods are annoying, tedious, boring,
  and so 19th century
• Use exclamation marks and question marks
  sparingly ??!!
• Why formulate questions?
• Instead provide answers!

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Use separators slides.Use them for acknowledging
collaborators by citing papersSanta Claus,
Rudolph the Reindeer (2005) Novel Statistics for
Cookie Recipes. North Pole Journal
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Avoid large tables

• Sum up your findings in a few sentences and
  pertinent numbers
• Put tables into the appendix.

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Provide links to webpages and post your slides on
the internet.

• This ensures that people get easy access to your
  methods and ideas.

http//www.ph.ucla.edu/biostat/people/horvath.htm
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Develop Your Own Style

• Realize that all of the above are just
  suggestions
• Trust your own instincts
• Violate the rules
• Define the goal of your talk and choose the
  optimal means of communication
• Are you applying for a job in a bank?
• Or are you talking to creative artists?

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End the presentation by reviewing the findings
and outlining future research

• Review
• Avoid animation, excessive colors
• Start with the variable axes when dealing with
  graphs
• Use humor to entertain the audience
• Present exciting real applications that entice
  the audience to read your theory papers
• Dont talk too fast
• As a rule, assume that the audience is completely
  clueless
• Dont dazzle the audience with your brilliance
• Your role is to entertain

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

• Briefly mention your collaborators and their
  roles
• I often start with this slide at the beginning

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Consider showing pictures of your
collaborators
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APPENDIXAlways have an appendix that contains
back up slides that you are not sure about
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REFERENCES

• Here are the papers that I want you to read
• And the software that I want you to try

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SIMULATION TABLE

• If you really need to know the results here they
  are.

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THE END