This Webinar is a very condensed version of the workshop I’ll give in
Accra.
• During the morning of Wednesday, January 18, I’ll provide more
details and more examples
• During the afternoon that day, the five fellows with whom I’ll be
working will practice giving their presentations
• The audience will provide feedback
I’ve tried in what I have today to mention the key do’s and don’ts. I
won’t discuss all of them, but there will be a PDF version of my notes
that you can use as a sort of checklist when you develop your own
presentation.
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Be well-designed and clear at the individual slide level
• Words and graphics are legible
• Words and graphics are the right ones
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• Introduce the topic and the issues you are going to address
• Return to these at the end, when you summarize your main
findings and conclusions
• Do not try to cover everything in the presentation
• Focus on several key points and try to illustrate them clearly
(ideally with a graph or table, rather than only words)
• “A picture is worth 1,000 words”
• Stay on point; there usually isn’t time for extraneous “interesting
facts”
You want the audience to come away with one or two key points,
rather than to overwhelm them with so much that they can’t
remember anything.
Your presentation is an opportunity to “sell” your research and make
the viewer interested enough to want to see your paper.
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• Slides should not be cluttered
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At least 20-point font
Sans serif font (e.g., Arial, Helvetica, Geneva)
Do not be overly wordy (but not too cryptic either)
Do not make many different points with the same slide.
Use different slides to make different points.
• Slide titles should reflect what’s shown in the slide
• Try to use “telegraphic” slide titles that summarize the main point
If you are using a logo on each slide, make sure that it doesn’t
interfere with the material on the body of the slide. Sometimes best
to only use the logo on the title slide.
And make sure text doesn’t run off slide.
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This is the outline of the points I’ll cover briefly today.
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Determine what message you want to leave in the minds of the audience
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Select supporting material for that message
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Be a “ruthless” editor; don’t overwhelm the audience with
unnecessary detail
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Provide motivation
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For non-technical audiences:
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Deemphasize tasks and methodology
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Focus on results
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• Background and motivation – Why the topic is important, what your
research adds
• Research question/hypotheses
• Data and Methodology (sample size, measures used, analytic methods)
• Findings
• Conclusions (answer the research question posed at the beginning)
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(Review the points on the slide)
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You generally have more information than you can present to your
audience
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Carefully select the data that you want to present
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Choose the format that makes your points most clearly
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Each format has certain advantages
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There are many different ways to present data graphically.
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(Mention a few)
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Try to use the most accurate type appropriate for what you’re showing.
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Pie charts are easier to interpret than figures relying on volume,
curvature, or color saturation
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Bar charts and column charts are less liable to misinterpretation than pie
charts
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For expressing complex data relationships, line charts are generally
easier to understand than bar and column charts
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• Stacked bar charts are good for comparing frequency distributions across groups
• Good use of color from green light, conveying good, to red, conveying bad.
Natural ordering along rainbow.
• Circles added to highlight the main points.
• (This slide is animated.)
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• Good use of color from green light, conveying good, to red, conveying bad.
Natural ordering along rainbow.
• Circles added to highlight the main points.
• (This slide is animated.)
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• Good use of color from green light, conveying good, to red, conveying bad.
Natural ordering along rainbow.
• Circles added to highlight the main points.
• (This slide is animated.)
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I’ll now discuss each of these.
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Title does not help viewer see pattern(s) of interest.
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• Title now summarizes one of the key relationships
• Can change the title or add footer to point out other patterns of interest.
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This is OK, but ..
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• A telegraphic title and graphic make the slide clearer and more interesting
• Can say the things on the previous slide in the oral presentation.
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A picture is worth 1,000 words.
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It is not clear from the title or the content what the main point is.
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• Part of interest is noted in the title and in the graph
• Tail weight is the main point. Notice how that’s noted in the title and is
highlighted in yellow in the pie chart and in its label.
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“Exploding” the piece of interest emphasizes it even more.
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If the slide is too complicated, the audience will spend too much time
processing it (or will not try)
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They may get lost in the graphic and miss the message
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You will spend too long trying to explain it
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It is better to prune the slide or build the graphic
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It can be more effective to break material into several slides that can
each be discussed quickly than to have one that you need to belabor
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An example of a cluttered slide.
Too much information to read and absorb.
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Less cluttered version is easier to comprehend.
Some details have been omitted, but it’s much easier to see the key points.
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This slide is making many different points; it’s difficult to discern the
key ones without extensive explanation by the presenter.
The title is not helpful.
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Here’s an example of a build.
“Building” a slide and adding a descriptive title make it easier for
viewers to see points of interest
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Coloring coding and underlining guides the viewer to the country of
interest.
Always note your data sources, unless this has already been covered
in a slide about your data.
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Build to show next year. (This presentation was given in 2007.)
Note that the slide title has changed to note the key point.
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Title is changes again. Color-coding helps pattern of interest stand
out.
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The immediately preceding slides helped the viewer see the main
points more clearly than this one by itself does. Those three new
slides can be briefed more effectively and probably more quickly than
this one.
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• For technical audiences, the use of jargon may be critical to establish
credibility
• Lets audience know that you understand the subject area
• For policy audiences, make sure the audience will know any jargon or
acronyms that you use.
• Otherwise, you will lose the audience, causing them to miss the
message.
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Often researcher is so close to the data that he/she doesn’t realize
that audience doesn’t know some important details.
• Indicate the following about your data
• The source of the data
• The year(s) and area(s) to which the data refer
• The units of analysis (e.g., individuals, geographic units)
• Sample size
• The key variables considered and how they are defined
• As you talk about data mention why you chose the data that you
use and why you feel that they are appropriate for your
presentation
• If you collected your own data, provide additional information about
sampling and methods of data collection
• Mention the method(s) of statistical analysis and why you chose
them. Adapt the technical level of your description to the level of
technical expertise of the audience.
Mention statistical methods after you describe your dependent
variable because typically method is adapted to the nature of the dep.
var.
At the workshop in Accra I’ll have many examples of how to present
info. about data and methods
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• Don’t present more information than is needed
• Asterisks are a good way to show statistical signif. If you show
asterisks for this, you don’t need standard errors, confidence
intervals, P-values, or t-statistics
• Show results graphically if you can. I’ll show a couple of
examples of how you can do this.
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Showing regression results graphically helps illustrate the relationship.
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Another example of a graphical display, in this case of three hazard
models.
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Note that statistical significance of results shown by whether symbols
are hollow or shaded in. One doesn’t have to sacrifice rigor to show
the results in a more digestible format.
Depending on the particulars of your analysis, results can be
presented as coefficients or odds ratios in a bar chart. Adjusted and
unadjusted odds ratios can be compared.
Predicted probabilities or values are another way to show the
implications of the analyses graphically. This may be particularly
effective for a non-technical audience, that may not know what odds
ratios or relative risks are, but can understand higher and lower
levels of income or infant mortality.
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Results displayed graphically are generally easier for viewers to grasp
If you present a table of numbers:
• Don’t present more information than is needed; e.g.,
• If you show asterisks indicating statistical significance, you don’t need
standard errors, confidence intervals, P-values, or t-statistics also
• Don’t present data you won’t discuss
• You can note what other variables were controlled
• If something is the same for every column (e.g., sample size), you can
note it once. You don’t need a row for it.
If you present a table of numbers make it as easy as possible for the viewer
to process the information.
• Try to use the same number of decimal places for all numbers (and don’t
have too many decimal places) and line up the decimal points within
columns
• Rescale variables (e.g., income in 1,000s) if coefficients have too many
leading zeros
• Use leading zeros for numbers that are < ǀ1ǀ
• Use headings, have spaces between rows, and/or shade rows to clearly
delineate different variables
• Use highlighting, color-coding, shading, or circling to emphasize key
results
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One way to wrap up your presentation.
I’ll have other examples in Accra.
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Also, the more complicated, the greater the chance that it will get messed up
if you use a different computer or a different version of Power Point.
Focus on substance, not style
• Avoid the use of busy backgrounds, 3-D, photographs, animation, or
sound that distract from the points you want to make
• Slides should not be cluttered or too wordy
• Use at least 20-point font
• Use a sans serif font
• Do not make many different points with the same slide
• Use different slides to make different points
• Slide on screen should correspond to what you’re saying
• Try to use “telegraphic” slide titles that summarize the main point
• A picture is often worth 1,000 words
Use the same syntax for items of the same level within a slide – either all
sentences, phrases, or imperatives; all active voice (or not); same verb
tenses
Use title case for slide titles, sentence case for text of slides
Try to have an interesting title and title slide
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A picture or photo can make your title slide more captivating and will draw
the audience in.
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• Make sure the colors for text and graphs show up clearly against the
background
• If one group is of particular interest, use a very distinctive color for it
• Try to be consistent across slides in your color scheme
• For graphs comparing different groups, the colors for different groups
should not be too similar
• If variable is quantitative (i.e., lower and higher values), you can have
gradations of color or shading that convey this (e.g., from lighter to
darker colors)
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• Label the curves or bars rather than using a legend
• Label axes in graphs and indicate units
• And use large enough font so that audience can see it. (Always think
of the person in the audience at the back of the room.)
• Note data sources; this legitimates the scientific rigor of your work.
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Use a larger font for the slide title than for the items in the body of the
slide
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Putting the title in italics and another color or in a colored field helps
it to stand out
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Have space between slide title and body of slide
Try to have the lines of the (centered) title somewhat balanced in
length
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PPT wraps the text; you may need to override this and impose
where the line break occurs.
Have a good amount of space between the slide title and the body of
the slide.
Have more space between bullets than within them
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Title does not stand out from body because there’s no extra space below it
and the font case, color, and size is not distinct from the body of the slide.
The two lines of the title are not balanced in length.
There’s as much space within bullets as between them, so it’s difficult to
easily see where one ends and the next begins.
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All elements stand out more clearly.
I often use line spacing of 0.95 and have around 20 pts between
bulleted items.
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• Be careful when cutting and pasting: formatting can change unless you
specify “Keep source formatting”
• Look at your presentation in Slide Show view and try to view it on the
computer and projector on which it will be presented
• Colors and font sizes can change across computers
• You can have some backup slides at the end, in anticipation of questions
you may be asked or other details you may want to provide
• If you are printing handouts of your slides in black and white, make sure
everything shows up distinctly. What were distinct colors may show up as
undistinguishable shades of gray in B&W.
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Audience:
What do and don’t they already know regarding background and methods?
Are they familiar with your topic and why it’s important?
Are they familiar with the statistical methods you are using and why they are
appropriate?
What are they interested in?
These two are typically the key differences between research and policy
audiences.
Are there language issues?
• Can they easily understand English?
• Does the presenter speak with an accent that may limit the audience’s
ability to understand him or her?
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For many presentations, such as at professional meetings and conferences
such as PopPov., you only have about 15 minutes to make your
presentation. This doesn’t sound like much, but you can actually cover a lot
of material if you’ve structured your presentation well. The key is to think
about the main points you want to make and recognize that you cannot
present everything, and may need to skip some of your favorite points.
Think about what’s most important for this audience.
Make sure what you have fits within the time allotted. It’s very upsetting to
be passed a note that you only have 2 minutes left when you still have the
majority of the presentation to give.
If you have too much material, you may try to deal with it by talking too fast
(and you will lose your audience in the process).
Make sure you pace yourself appropriately. A good set of slides can help
you do it.
And, very importantly, practice, to make sure your presentation will fit within
the time limit and that you have good transitions from one slide to the next.
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That’s all for today. Thank you for your time and attention.
More details will be provided in Accra.
I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have.
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