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Physics Forum At Fermilab Bans Powerpoint
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Amanda Solliday reports at Symmetry that six months ago, organizers of a biweekly forum on Large Hadron Collider physics at Fermilab banned PowerPoint presentations in favor of old-fashioned, chalkboard-style talks. 'Without slides, the participants go further off-script, with more interaction and curiosity,' says Andrew Askew. 'We wanted to draw out the importance of the audience.' In one recent meeting, physics professor John Paul Chou of Rutgers University presented to a full room holding a single page of handwritten notes and a marker. The talk became more dialogue than monologue as members of the audience, freed from their usual need to follow a series of information-stuffed slides flying by at top speed, managed to interrupt with questions and comments. Elliot Hughes, a Rutgers University doctoral student and a participant in the forum, says the ban on slides has encouraged the physicists to connect with their audience. 'Frequently, in physics, presenters design slides for people who didn't even listen to the talk in the first place,' says Hughes. 'In my experience, the best talks could not possibly be fully understood without the speaker.'"
I always get much more out of a lecture if the instructor is actively diagramming on the blackboard. Maybe I'm old fashioned.
You mean LaTeX, right?
For precisely this reason. It also means you go at a speed where students can pick up the material. Slides you just go too fast. Most of the students like it. The ones that don't show up at class, not so much.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
My wife and I have communicated exclusively with PowerPoint slides for the past 21 years. A chalk board would just make a mess.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-feynman-tufte-princip/
Incompatibility between versions, useless features (plots) and absolutely broken formatting issues means most scientists are using TeX -> PDF these days. I spend a lot of my time talking them through converting video to animated GIF because codecs are flagrantly nonstandard worldwide.
And nothing of value was lost.
In my experience, Powerpoint users focus more on effects than on content. I once saw someone advocating the use of a kind of "giant notebook" for drawing the slides live, with the idea that it would foster interaction and keep the audience interested. As someone that usually sleeps during Powerpoint presentations this idea sounds better, although I don't really think it would help unless the presenter worked for it.
Another presentation program that I feel that works too much on effect is Prezi. I often see presentations on it so full of movement and loops that I think some risk movement sickness from that. And the delay to change slides is a pain when the presentation has ended and someone asks to see that third slide from the beginning.
Hasn't chalk been banned by the TSA as a suspicious white powder?
Excellent - interaction with the audience is the key here, otherwise you may as well see any number of course videos online.
I remember I think a previous Slashdot story, where the students were encouraged to read the presentation first (Word/Powerpoint whatever), and then in the lecture hall, the idea was to discuss and Q+A the professor. A far better use of time - more interesting and productive.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
The LHC is at Cern. Maybe they should ban a bi-weekly forum on CERN's activities and focus on activities at Fermi lab?
Someone you trust is one of us.
Those who have no point, use Power Point!
"The Military's Enemy Within: PowerPoint"
http://www.newser.com/story/87...
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
The bullet-point presentation was always about presenting evidence and alternatives for an executable decision. Classically, in a hierarchical organization where the receipients of the presentation are the functional leadership who are empowered to make and enforce operational decisions but expect their minions to gather "decision-grade information" and present it in a minimal-overhead, maximal-efficiency format.
It was never about collaboration or exploration. It gets used like that, but it's a terrible fit. It was never intended to encourage discussion. A well-crafted slide deck ends all conversation because all the facts are in. If the leader has to ask questions, or another participant questions your facts or your conclusion, your presentation was sub-optimal.
A bullet-point presentation is supposed to be the shortest path to an incontrovertible and non-debatable decision.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
5.3 not 6.+ though
If the only recorded information is your own notes, then you need to either stenograph the talk with no time to digest (which leaves you with the same problem as the information-filled slides did, plus finger cramps), or risk missing something important.
I'll concur that slides are a very poor format for a handout, though, and senseless if you're not even projecting the slides during the talk. Just hand out the notes.
Powerpoint is good when the visual material you have is auxiliary. Usually, when the presenter is engaging and articulate, you end up not paying much attention to the slides. The slides then become like index cards for the speaker - they help with the design. They also help 'burn' the content into the audience by keeping points in their field of view long after they were covered verbally.
Chalkboards/Whiteboards are the better choice when visual material is not a supplement but a component of the presentation. What they help do is to turn static content into a narrative. Seeing a hand circle the 'x' in 3x+5=20 makes a stronger impression than to see it circled to begin with.
These are freaking scientists; learning to use tex for scientific publishing is first-year undergrad stuff. How would you even draw something like a Feynman diagram in Powerpoint?
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. I've been at very productive scientific meetings where someone puts up one or two slides of data and we spend the rest of the time in an open discussion around the whiteboard trying to figure out what it means (and which experiments should come next).
~Idarubicin
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tuf...
I've read the booklet and I found it persuasive.
Tufte (and iirc, Feynman) also cited reliance on Powerpoint on the Columbia disaster
I think it's important to understand what powerpoint is good for. It is good for helping an average presenter guide the delivery of low-bandwidth information into a low-attention span audience who are not subject matter experts.
In other words, it's good for 90% of the people, 90% of the time.
If you are trying to send people to space, or create controlled black holes on the European mainland, do not use it.
Another situation where PP can be used effectively is to present visual information - photos, charts, etc.
Ironically enough, I borrowed the Tufte powerpoint rant from the Microsoft Library here at work :)
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Power point is the software embodiment of talking points, the political and marketing strategy for repeating over and over "the message", i.e., the verbiages/phrases to be imprinted in the audience' heads.
It's a propaganda tool, not a discussion tool to encourage understanding.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
An effective slide show should not:
Be primary source of information
Exceed 7 words on 4 lines
Contain unrelated graphs and images
Discourage discussion of the slides contents
This is my example of an effective powerpoint slide. This slide while only containing 22 words should probably take a few minutes to talk about. A powerpoint of maybe 10 slides for me often ends up being about an hour long. I build in a degree of Q/A and questions directed to the audience to keep them engaged and interested in the content. A presentation should be a discussion and not a group reading exercise. Clearly these scientists are great at science, but terrible at sharing it if they can't use a slide show effectively.
Then with the advent of lithography to replace the woodcuts, the price of including diagrams in books started falling. So one would think the botonists everywhere shouted hallelujah and thanked the providence. No. There was serious opposition to these line drawings of simple plant forms to describe the species. They railed that the pictures were a distraction. Pictures are ambiguous(!), Images do not have the clarity of description afforded by the precisely defined technical terms. Pictures are for kids. Not for serious scientists. It took quite a bit of time for images to become common in botony books.
Now a days other than providing a rich source of words to stump the adults and torture small children preparing to be the spelling bee and to weed out the slackers in botony 101, there does not seem to be much use for these terms. (Well, I am not a botonist, and I am sure an army of them are going to rise up and roast me here.)
Power point was a novelty, and suddenly every one can produce slides and make presentations. Most people suck at content creation, and no amount of transition animation and font choices is going to make them better. Good communicators will excel in using power points. Bad ones will suck even with the chalkboard.
I agree most power point presentations are a waste of time. Most of them have very little content. Most of them suck big time. Where I disagree is, blaming the tool for the sins of the tool wielder.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
"powerpoint" is a brand name for a computer program that can make visual computer images & text
**images & text**
that's all powerpoint is...
You are depriving students of a very effective communication channel b/c you don't know how to use it properly. I'm not saying TFA is "wrong" or that you personally are unprofessional...but **regressing to using ONLY CHALK is a problem of THE PRESENTER**
Chalk-only is much more simplistic. Science types are typically horrible public speakers. Using something as *visually complex* as PPT effectively in a speech or presentation requires mid-level presentation skills.
The first lesson I used to teach for PPT is "less is more" You can have 'slides' you hand out but don't present, also, your handout doesn't *just* have to have your PPT slides
Also, the "PPT" has become a way for people to procrastinate & do half-ass work. Especially in business sectors that are very perception-based, the presentation is what gets you the contract, not the RFP....not saying it's right or good, just describing how things often work.
Powerpoint is a computer program....**its just another communication channel** the fact that some people can't use it effectively means they need to *learn better communication and speaking skills*
Thank you Dave Raggett
ppt vs chalk-only is a false dichotomy
you can use **both**
this whole thing is about a lack of ability to use a complex communication channel effectively
Thank you Dave Raggett
In business you often present information on the status of something and then after a dialogue have to decide on actions. Without presentation of data this would not work. Powerpoint is ok as a means of showing data. A blackboard is ok for teaching abstract subjects but probably isnt suitable for subjects that require familiarity with physical objects. Anti Powerpoint crusades are a stupid concept, Powerpoint is fine for many applications.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
A business flight over the Pacific developed problems and crashed into the ocean. Three survivors washed up on the beach of an island inhabited by cannibals - an American businessman, a French businessman and a Japanese businessman.
The cannibals had a long-standing tradition that gave each eaten one a last request before eating them.
They went to the French business man first. His last request was for a cigarette. The island was rather close to shipping lanes and many things washed up on the beach and were saved by the cannibals. In short order they had a carton of French cigarettes to grant his last request.
Then they went to the Japanese businessman. His request was a little tougher. When the plane went down he was on a trip to Japan to pitch a new product to investors. He had spent 6 months on a PowerPoint presentation and his last wish was to give that PowerPoint presentation. The island was rather close to shipping lanes and many things washed up on the beach and were saved by the cannibals. They managed to scrounge a generator and a projector and the Japanese businessman had managed to hang onto his laptop with the presentation after the crash. His last wish could be granted.
Then they went to the American businessman for his last request.
"Kill me first!" he said. "There ain't no way I wanna sit through another PowerPoint presentation!"
PPT is a tool, nothing more. People either use it effectively or they don't. If they don't, that's hardly the fault of the tool. There are plenty of people who use PPT well giving presentations, seminars, interactive talks every single day.
My suggestion: get better speakers.
Fermilab struggles to find enough funds to maintain their conference Audio Visual equipment and has discontinued providing video projectors for lectures to save money. Facing difficult economic conditions and funding shortages has forced a re-prioritization of how money is spent on technology.
"Others are claiming this is about not wanting to use Power Point," said one A/V technician "but I can assure you it is about saving money. We are simply not replacing any projector lamps and as existing equipment stops working we are taking down the projection screens and uncovering the chalk boards they cover."
"Chalk is cheep!" said another.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
They can't object to anyone using Google Slides/Keynote/LibreOffice, then, right?
The ban is just an excuse for poor presenters: PowerPoint does not kill people - bad PowerPoint presentations kill people. I myself just make slides to generate some interest, and leave a trail of the discussion point. During the presentation, I stay within certain limitations, but always veer and steer depending on the audience. That means I never give the same presentation twice. It's all on how you build the slides and how you use them. So don't blame the tool. Blame the dumb-ass using the tool. Now on the down side, I've been in an auditorium with 300 scientists and NASA engineers and after giving a talk for 30 mins, the only questions I get are ones I already discussed and and answered during the talk.
Some years ago an article mentioned Scott McNealy noticed amount of data being sent back and forth, and also amount of time people spending on preparing PPT. So he banned Powerpoint and there was noticeable increase in productivity, people actually doing stuff instead of futzing with PPT slides (though I also heard there was zero MS products on desktop computers at Sun so not sure how PPT was originally in place). For me when I do PPT, I typically do it in MS Word with pages in landscape orientation, then save it as PDF. When I gotta do PPT, I try to keep minimal cutesy graphics.
But maybe the whole concept of PPT type slides including old school viewgraphs and charts leads to people making bullet lists that contain contradictions. Like what Feynman pointed out of a slide NASA used for describing Shuttle ops and priorities and he marked two sentences that contradict each other, which was a contributing factor of leading to dangerous situations. I can't remember the details but it was one of those "yeow, we actually made that mistake?!?" moments.
mfwright@batnet.com
Indeed. "A bad workman always blames his tools." If you think my powerpoint is confusing, I've got news for you: my chalk talk is the same level of poor organization, but now it has awful handwriting too.
Next up: physics forum bans verbal or written communication. You have to dance your research.
Powerpoint is for sales presentations to a large and anonymous audience. Basically, when you want to be Steve Jobs(1). In a small meeting, or something with interactivity, Powerpoint is probably the most misused tool on the planet today.
(1) Actually, if you want to give a professional presentation, you'll use Keynote, but if you want to be a cheap ripoff, you'll use Powerpoint.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I had a similar situation with U.M.L. I do like the software apps., but, many times, I have to work with a whiteboard, and many of my collegues are too much "attached" to use a laptop or desktop pc, or projector.
I used to give presentations to our customers and prospects in our "Corporate Visit Center" and was always extremely disappointed with the dog-and-pony shows I experienced. The problem goes well beyond PowerPoint and gets into people who have no idea how to present an idea. I'd follow speakers who would have 100 slides for a 45 minute presentation, average 3-4 minutes per slide and then wonder why they were behind schedule.
I would show up with my PowerPoint presentation queued up and then I would challenge the audience to ask enough questions to be able to break free from it. After a while I got pretty good at never even getting past the title slide before breaking into a back-and-forth discussion and white-board diagramming. I consistently rated as the most popular speaker because I didn't walk in and present to the audience - I engaged and would talk about anything they wanted to talk about.
I remember a new guy came on board and he was sent to watch me after I was billed as the best presenter. He reported back that I never got past the first slide and the response from my manager was, "Exactly!"
PowerPoint is just one symptom of a larger problem: the inability to interact with an audience and discuss what they want to discuss. Even for those who needed PowerPoint in order to present I would coach them to not read the slides. The audience will read the words on the slides as you speak. The presenter should be telling a story that engages an audience - the presentation can be used as reminder points to the speaker or as either supplemental content for the audience to read or important/complex points you want them to take home for later study.
Having sat through far too many PowerPoint meetings, I've found that the problem isn't PowerPoint itself, but that most people have a compulsion to cram far too much information onto each slide. It basically gets turned into a teleprompt. So what ends up happening is that by the time the presenter done regurgitating what's on the screen everyone's already read through it all.
PowerPoint is best used to convey overarching themes and talking points. It frames what the presenter is going to say and helps emphasize critical points. This PowerPoint ban essentially produces the same net result, but what people really need is to learn how to use the application.
Doesn't everybody use Beamer nowadays?
That means LibreOffice Impress is fine, right?
It's presentations/slides that were banned,not a specific Microsoft Product. Can't use OpenOffice Impress, either.
right...you're in the ballpark but the comparisons are off-angle
chalk-only (or whiteboard) vs ppt is the wrong context that causes confusion
1. it's a false dichotomy...both can be used
2. disctinction must be made between using a 'projected computer screen' and the **software** called "powerpoint"...I can show a youtube video in a ppt, or I can show it in a browser, or I can download the video to the hard drive....it's all video!
3. it's not a question of "features"...we're not buying a fsking BMW here...this is about channels of communication...how wide & how much noise is there?
In the context of any presentation, the speaker uses **all the tools available to their most funcitonal**...that's it...
You can't get around the fact that the whole "problem" of "bad powerpoint" is due to the speakers themselves not undertanding how to use a **more complex** communication channel effectively
Thank you Dave Raggett
ok...
We don't need to make an archane, arbitrary ban on all "powerpoint"...it's stupid for several reasons
1. "powerpoint" is a software program...computer projectors can project any image, including **other presentation software** or a web browser...to ban one specific software is absolutely foolish, and to ban using all computer projection is moreso
2. no one "needs" any piece of software or display equipment. they are all ****TOOLS FOR COMMUNICATION**** to be used as needed.
3. the problem of "bad powerpoints" cannot be solved by banning the use of "powerpoint" (w/e that means)....it will only be sovled by professors & other presentors ***learning how to use technology effectively in public speaking***
Thank you Dave Raggett
For our group meetings, we used to do chalkboard talks, and this year we ended them for all the same reasons. Without slides, the discussion tends to wander aimlessly, and the speaker does not get to talk about what she intended to talk about in the first place. It takes forever to sketch the simplest diagrams on a chalkboard, the resulting figure has little accuracy and the audience has to sit through a lot of pointless sketching where no information is being conveyed.
Most people still use LaTeX-Beamer rather than PowerPoint, but the latest versions of PPT actually have very good equation tools, so IMHO, there's little reason to favor one over the other. The days of academics trashing on PPT are long gone.
This reminds me of a Calc lecturer I had that when hearing a request from the hall to slow down his board work, relayed a story that when he was in college, his Calc prof had broken his writing arm but soon taught himself to use his other hand instead.
Once he was healed, he then started using both hands to write on the chalk board during his lectures.
I'm shocked that nobody has reminisced about the boxes of plastic transparencies and overhead projectors yet on this thread.
Physicists giving a talk used to struggle with finding an extension cord for the overhead projector instead of the right dongle for their laptop. The talk came in a box, and they used to fiddle with writing slides using transparency markers. You could write whatever equation you wanted!
And make professors actually.... teach!?!
"Dad, there are other wipes than just the star wipe." -- Lisa
If you have any experimental data to show, you are going to need some sort of viewgraph projector or computer display. I don't think that many of ones colleagues would be content to trust that your hand-drawn data points agree perfectly with your hand-drawn "theory" curve!
That said, it is fantastic to see people going back to the chalkboard. What is really unfortunate is that most places have ripped out their chalkboards, replaced them with dry erase boards, and then stopped stocking them with fresh markers.
Many presenters do nothing more than read aloud the text on the screen. That adds zero value, for those of us who know how to read. I've been guilty of that myself a time or two, when I was forced to give a PowerPoint presentation and didn't have time to think about how I could add some value beyond the on-screen text.
And then there are the times when a slide is full of small text, and the presenter moves on to the next slide before the audience has had a chance to read it all. If you didn't intend for us to read all those words, why did you put them in the slide in the first place?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I always get much more out of a lecture if the instructor is actively diagramming on the blackboard.
That might be a valid argument for an undergraduate course, it might even work for a theory research presentation but it is not possible to accurately show experimental data without being able to show slides. Even in the days before video projectors we used acetate slides created by heat transfer from a photocopy or laser printout. You cannot just sketch a data plot on a blackboard and expect anyone to take it seriously.
This has nothing to do with powerpoint being bad and chalk being good. Anyone who has went through school knows there are also professors or people in general that simply talk to the chalk board and carry on with themselves. They don't know how to engage the audience or use their tools to make the audience want to talk. I've seen both good presentations and bad with powerpoint. The same goes for chalk lectures. It's just a delivery tool, the rest depends on whoever is the one giving the information out.
In this case we're figuring out that some people just talk to the powerpoint and when they use chalk, they actually have to sit there and process the information, which gives them time to walk things over better with whoever is listening. It's entirely based on the person and has nothing to do with chalk > powerpoint or whatever.
I've had professors give lectures based on powerpoint, chalk, overheads, whiteboard, sometimes with nothing more then a sheet of paper... it ENTIRELY depends on who is giving it and their ability to make those around them understand... Basically just being a good teacher.
if you have a set of slides there is no flexibility, if you are giving a chalk talk (and you actually know what you are talking about) you can tailor the talk to the audience, if you know a part is understood you can skip things, if you find a point that is more difficult to understand you can add context, provide more examples etc.
Slide talks are best at presenting facts, not that great at conveying information (since there is no flexibility), and quite bad at fostering discussion (since your audience generally won't be very engaged), so the decision here to stick to chalkboard talks seems like a good idea.
-- the cake is a lie
haha.
Oops :)
Ok, Feynman ridiculed NASA about the _other_ shuttle disaster :)
My apologies :)
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
In my experience, there's an inverse relationship between someone's skill with Powerpoint and their skill in whatever subject they're talking about. (Except if it's how to make fluffy presentations in Powerpoint.)
I can't count how many presentations I've sat through (some I even paid for) that involved some guy in a suit reading the overheads to us. It's the most unsatisfying way to spend an hour that I can think of off hand. The fact that people make a living doing this is one of the mysteries of the universe. The fastest way to get the system to crumble is to tell them the overhead is broken and they'll have to use the board.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I think the point is, Powerpoint (or whatever presentation tool you're using) is a tool that is abused often enough that a moratorium may be necessary to force presenters to think less in terms of special effects and more in terms of transfer of knowledge.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
It was never about collaboration or exploration. It gets used like that, but it's a terrible fit. It was never intended to encourage discussion. A well-crafted slide deck ends all conversation because all the facts are in. If the leader has to ask questions, or another participant questions your facts or your conclusion, your presentation was sub-optimal.
Generally agree, but it can be useful for covering background, setting up the framework for collaboration, etc. Just going into a room for brainstorming works for some things, especially if it is a completely new space. However, usually you want to go in with some kind of plan of attack.
But I agree with your point - the stuff you want in the presentation is the stuff that is settled: the background. You're not going to use it as a collaborative environment for the stuff you're creating.
I find mind-maps, spreadsheets, etc more useful for online note-taking in a group, depending on the nature of the discussion. That is, when a piece of paper isn't the better solution (again, depends on how many people, how complex the topic is, whether you're brainstorming, refining, data-collecting, etc).
The key is to have lots of tools in the toolbox and to use the right one.
Which is why he had his people make Keynote....
If you watch Jobs' presentations though, they tend to be black title slides and slides with a single graphic. No bullets.
So instead of helping people to learn how to make better presentations, they're going to punish people with bad handwriting. Did someone get their feelings hurt when someone else made a better presentation?
There's one tremendous problem with using a chalkboard, whiteboard, etc. that everyone forgets: any board low enough for the presenter to write on is low enough to be blocked by the presenter when they stand in front of it. My thesis advisor was convinced that chalk boards were better but never learned to step to the side so we could see what he had just written.
It is also a matter of the length of talks: you can only talk about one thing that worked for 15m-1hr. You can't really pass on the horror stories of the wrong directions, where you got equipment from if you are an experimentalist (I fortunately was a computational theorist so just needed access to a supercomputer), other areas you were looking in to, details about positions that are available in your group and what the group culture is like etc etc.
You really have to be there. The problem I've found is at several companies I've worked at is that the training budget is way too low (I was getting 1-2k a year for training purposes). For that kind of money you can't afford to go anywhere that doesn't happen to be in your town (and I don't live in a big conference city), you get highly encouraged to "make the most of online training opportunities". I think a big part of it is employers realize that conferences are networking opportunities and so conferences are not good for employee retention.