How To Give Effective Scientific Presentations: Tiffani L. Williams

How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations
Tiffani L. Williams
Department of Computer Science

Texas A&M University
http://faculty.cs.tamu.edu/tlw
Part I
Introduction
Introduction
Why Do We Give Presentations?
Persuasive: Convincing your audience to follow a particular

course of action.
Instructional: Showing others how to perform a specific
task (e.g., laboratory demonstration).
Informative: Presenting new findings of information.
Introduction
What Makes Giving a Presentation Difficult?
One chance for the audience to hear.

The audience cannot look up background information.
The audience is restricted to the speaker’s pace.
Success is dependent upon the speaker’s ability to deliver.
Training on how to give scientific presentations is often not
provided.
Part II
Overcoming Our Fears

Activity #1
What are your fears when giving a scientific presentation?

My Fears
Losing the audience’s attention.

Lacking sufficient material.
Appearing too simple.
Presenting work to a mixed audience.
A successful presentation starts with a confident

speaker.
Stay calm and relaxed.

Know your material.
Practice giving your presentation.
You have a valuable message to share!
Part III
Structure: The Strategy You Choose

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Figure: Boston subway.

Figure: Boston subway.
Maps
Maps and Presentations
Every map has an intended audience.

Maps are defined by what they include but are often more
revealing in what they exclude.
It is impossible to show everything!
No matter how hard you try to include everything, there will
always be something missing.
However, whatever you decide to present should tell a
story.
The Audience
What Story Will You Tell?
Remember, you will never be able to tell the full story.

Instead, you must select the pieces that are the most
relevant.
But, how do you select what to present?
The Audience
Activity #2
Imagine that you are packing for a trip. What will you bring?
The Audience
I Need More Information!
What is my destination?
What is my purpose (e.g., vacation, business trip)
How long will I be gone?
The Audience
Packing and Presentations
You wouldn’t pack for a trip without knowing the destination

and the intended purpose of the trip.
Similarly, you should never give a presentation without
considering your audience and their needs.
The Audience
Thinking About Your Audience
What does the audience know?

What are they unlikely to know?
What kind of talk would the audience find appealing?
The Audience
My Audience
Composed mostly of students.

Has given or seen a scientific presentation.
Interested in learning about giving effective presentations.
May have been strongly encouraged (or forced) to attend
by their advisor.
Part IV
Sample Presentation
Sample Presentation
Audience Expectations
What Does the Audience Want to Know?
What’s the Problem? (Introduction)

What are You Doing? (Experiment and Method)
What Have You Found and What Does It Means? (Results
and Discussion)
Take-Home Message (Conclusions)
Who Did and Paid for the Work? (Acknowledgements)
Sample Presentation
Outline slide
Get rid of the outline slide!
Motivation
Your Algorithm or Methodology
Experimental Results
Conclusions
Future Work
Sample Presentation
Reaching Multiple Audiences
First Second
Major Major
Intro Topic Topic Ending
time
Nontechnical
General
Technical
Specialist
depth
Figure: You can’t please everyone all of the time. Adapted from The
Craft of Scientific Presentations by Michael Alley.
Sample Presentation
What’s the problem?
TGCTA
TGGTC
CGATA
AGCTC
ACCGC AGCTT TCGCG CAGTT CAGTG
Figure: Phylogeny:Illustration.
Sample Presentation
Phylogeny
From the Tree of the Life Website,
University of Arizona
Orangutan Gorilla Chimpanzee Human

Sample Presentation
What’s so hard about reconstructing a tree?
We can’t verify the answer! We are trying to predict the

past.
The number of possible trees for n organisms (or taxa) is
(2n − 5)!! = 1 × 3 × 5 × 7 × · · · (2n − 5).
How many possible hypotheses are there for 500 taxa?
Sample Presentation
Number of trees for 500 taxa
101152636853253307474012545536814184545953595103177817441326760
575354540027354239923185120850729281452188845672454906078405199
548334663555835357748979700404888152382777235828789778883827083
879520379654335442692118284017668933765146297741290321491422188
461934211322520490553755930128491420943083731473702853911575459
092790187541739039779539968260469372709754907153967724213213301
619211242677711757042116860278030246424393282604683928277544702
004024525439745312625940855936045351781359433925232787668240389
543059720773515213084928436546402475634030885682876051282569771
792020997072230898150513179396946394522142159208349384664346962
256120104483730916485543102772698545449577536942796787841027981
718342034235251080912363733252495409554975559313272782465380621
055314336272287166870064159034339277014925661499965120537691592
061432825699618256792894495401900633880555360239418241295638642
828064143651877071620389850413570868327006823979839417007571891
860810831375937653051279717486968104181402271737999015446125297
308847695505977363634413078780761890937449555118036210351806866
727116790075717314422532435108543175076637978946516065697371580
159930481479731383058494656194406090860578395451199918916887394
920259212050615153793334686404827729255644086503451717362622730
433940887451171875
Sample Presentation
What do we do now?
The problem isn’t going away.

Grand Challenge problem: Tree of Life
Evolutionary history of all known species on the planet
(estimates between 10 to 100 million)
We need heuristics!
Recast as a optimization problem.
Optimization criterion of interest: maximum parsimony
Sample Presentation
Remainder of Presentation
What am I Doing? (Experiment and Method)

What Have I Found and What Does It Means? (Results
and Discussion)
Take-Home Message (Conclusions)
Who Did and Paid for the Work? (Acknowledgements)
Part V
Visual Aids: Your Supporting Cast

Software
Presentation Software
PowerPoint
The most frequently used software for creating
presentations.
“Power corrupts. PowerPoint absolutely corrupts.” – Edward
Tufte
Keynote (only available on Mac OS X)
Latex-based tools
Prosper
Beamer (used for this presentation)
Software
Keep It Short and Simple (K.I.S.S.)
Some people cannot resist the temptation to assert their

mathematical superiority.
Consider the following equation
inf
X
2 2
ln(e) + sin x + cos x = 2−n
n=0
and its more “trivial” form
1 + 1 = 2.
Plots
n-gram, permuted n-gram, unrelated
1.0
0.9
0.8
0.7
similarity score
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0.0
2
15
60
n
Figure: A poorly designed plot.

Plots
n-perm, permuted n-perm, unrelated
1.0
0.9
0.8
0.7
similarity score
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0.0
2
10
15
30
60
100
n
Figure: Another poorly designed plot.

Part VI
Delivery: It’s Showtime!

Speech
Show enthusiasm.
Speak freely.
Speak clearly.
Speak slower than you would in a normal conversation.
Make sure you are speaking the audience’s language.
Stay on Track!
Don’t go over your allotted time!

Surviving the Discussion Period
Handling Questions
You say: That’s a very interesting question.

You mean: You obviously didn’t listen properly.
You say: I’m glad you raised that point.
You mean: I’ll say it again, so listen this time!
You say: I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to that one.
You mean: Why did you have to ask that? It’s irrelevant here.
You say: Yes, the additional experiments you suggest are very
appropriate.
You mean: I don’t care about running more experiments. I
simply want to graduate!
Surviving the Discussion Period
Don’t forget ...
You are the expert!

A few people ask questions to be obnoxious.
Many people ask questions because they are interested in
your work.
The sign of a good presentation is a lively discussion
afterwards.
Part VII
Wrap-Up
Concluding Remarks
Summary
The key to an effective presentation is concern for your

audience.
Don’t overwhelm them, but don’t underwhelm them either.
Say what you need to say and sit down. Everyone’s
internal clock is ticking.
Relax, stay calm, and remember you are the expert!
References
Michael Alley, The Craft of Scientific Presentations: Critical

Steps to Succeed and Critical Errors to Avoid, 2003.
Claus Ascheron and Angela Kickuth, Make Your Mark in
Science, 2005.
Edward R. Tufte, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, 2003.
Peter Turchi, Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as
Cartographer, 2004.
Justin Zobel, Writing for Computer Science, 2004.
Thank you for your

attention

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How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations

How to Give Effective Scientific Presentations

Department of Computer Science

Why Do We Give Presentations?

Persuasive: Convincing your audience to follow a particular

What Makes Giving a Presentation Difficult?

One chance for the audience to hear.

Overcoming Our Fears

What are your fears when giving a scientific presentation?

Losing the audience’s attention.

A successful presentation starts with a confident

Stay calm and relaxed.

Structure: The Strategy You Choose

Brigham Circle SL3 am

Melnea Cass Blvd

Transfer Station Parking Morton St.

*Boylston: Accessible for Silver Line Washington

*State: Blue line wheelchair access outbound

side only. Inbound riders transfer to outbound Readville

train at Government Center. Exit State outbound Readville

Water Transportation Services

Figure: Boston subway.

Maps and Presentations

Every map has an intended audience.

What Story Will You Tell?

Remember, you will never be able to tell the full story.

I Need More Information!

Packing and Presentations

You wouldn’t pack for a trip without knowing the destination

Thinking About Your Audience

What does the audience know?

Composed mostly of students.

What Does the Audience Want to Know?

What’s the Problem? (Introduction)

Get rid of the outline slide!

ACCGC AGCTT TCGCG CAGTT CAGTG

Orangutan Gorilla Chimpanzee Human

What’s so hard about reconstructing a tree?

We can’t verify the answer! We are trying to predict the

Number of trees for 500 taxa

The problem isn’t going away.

What am I Doing? (Experiment and Method)

Visual Aids: Your Supporting Cast

Keep It Short and Simple (K.I.S.S.)

Some people cannot resist the temptation to assert their

and its more “trivial” form

n-gram, permuted n-gram, unrelated

Figure: A poorly designed plot.

n-perm, permuted n-perm, unrelated

Figure: Another poorly designed plot.

Delivery: It’s Showtime!

Don’t go over your allotted time!

You say: That’s a very interesting question.

Don’t forget ...

You are the expert!

The key to an effective presentation is concern for your

Michael Alley, The Craft of Scientific Presentations: Critical

Thank you for your

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