Using graphs in presentations and keeping your message simple
March 12th, 2007A post at Presentation Zen discusses keeping the signal-to-noise ratio in presentations as low as possible. Definitely worth a look, the point is to keep your slides uncluttered (noise) so that the audience can focus on your message (signal).
As an example of this I recently gave a presentation to illustrate hierarchical regulation. I gave the talk to a non bioinformatics audience so therefore I was trying to present using a simple and straight forward manner. The slides included a couple of graphs, and since I’ve mentioned graphs in presentations previously I thought I’d include a few slides here. The presentation might appear minimal, but I was also speaking at the same time.
March 13th, 2007 at 4:59 am
perhaps the slides aren’t showing correctly, but you don’t label your purple and blue lines on the graphs. This is a very basic first issues with the slides as they appear to me.
March 13th, 2007 at 10:12 am
Thanks for pointing this out cariaso.
The slides are very bare, and there is not much information on them. On their own the graphs don’t explain very much. I did this because I wanted everyone to focus on me rather than the slide. For each graph I talked the audience through what the graph meant - getting out from behind the podium and putting my hands into the slide. I hoped that this made the presentation more dynamic for the audience. I was particularly worried about this since I was presenting a bioinformatics topic to a wet-lab audience, and as you probably know bioinformatics is often seen as a dry and dusty subject.
The slides wouldn’t serve as a handout, if you were lecturing for example. But I believe Garr Reynolds would say that you either prepare a presentation or a report, if you try to do both you end up with neither.
Check this out as example of how to give a fantastic talk on a technical subject.
link