How to Give a Good Talk

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How to Give a Good Talk

• Bonnie Dorr

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The speaker approaches the head of the room and
sits down at the table. (You can't see him/her
through the heads in front of you.) S/he begins
to read from a paper, speaking in a soft
monotone. (You can hardly hear. Soon you're
nodding off.) Sentences are long, complex, and
filled with jargon. The speaker emphasizes
complicated details. (You rapidly lose the thread
of the talk.) With five minutes left in the
session, the speaker suddenly looks at his/her
watch. S/he announces -- in apparent surprise --
that s/he'll have to omit the most important
points because time is running out. S/he shuffles
papers, becoming flustered and confused. (You do
too, if you're still awake.) S/he drones on.
Fifteen minutes after the scheduled end of the
talk, the host reminds the speaker to finish for
the third time. The speaker trails off
inconclusively and asks for questions. (Thin,
polite applause finally rouses you from
dreamland.) Paul Edwards
on How to give a talk
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Whats wrong with this picture?
Talk

• Reading
• Sitting
• No visual aids
• Small print, busy slides
• No moving about
• Monotone
• Mumbling
• Facing downward
• Lost in details
• Running overtime
• No conclusion
• Ignoring audience

Stand
Diagrams, graphs
Large print
Move
Vary pitch
Speak loudly/clearly
Eye contact
Focus on main points
Finish on time
Summarize, conclude
Respond to audience
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What will I talk about today?

• Central Messages
• Giving a good talk is important!
• Dont annoy your audience!
• Preparation
• Where are you presenting?
• Who is your audience?
• What is your central message?
• How are your slides put together?
• How do you answer questions?
• Presentation Types
• oral exam or thesis defense
• conference talk
• Summary

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Giving a Good Talk Its important!
Tamara G. Kolda, 2002

• More people will see your talks than will read
  your papers
• The audience will form their impressions of you
  based on your talks
• Early in career, treat every talk like an
  interview talk
• Start as early as you canno later than 1 year
  before your PhD

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How might I annoy my audience?
David Patterson, circa 1983

• not be neat (in good order)
• not covet brevity (concise)
• not write large
• not use color
• not illustrate
• not make eye contact
• not skip slides in a long talk
• not practice

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Preparation

• Know what your surroundings will be like size of
  room, microphone, equipment, etc.
• Know your audience and tune your message to that
  audience
• Get to the pointearly and often
• Organize your slides so that they effectively
  deliver your central message
• Answer questions skillfully

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Where are you presenting?
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Know your surroundings
Patrick Winston on How to Speak

• Look at the hall you want the place to be
  comfortably crowded
• How many people will be there? Nature of talk
  changes with size of audience!
• 20 people discussion is possible
• 50 people performance is expected
• Find out who has talked before
• Schedule talk for 11am
• Mood people reading newspapers will make you
  feel bad! (Dont allow it.)

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Who is your audience?
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Know your Audience
Tamara G. Kolda, 2002

• One of the biggest mistakes speakers make is not
  knowing their audience!
• Will your audience include
• Specialists in your sub-field? In your field?
• Researchers in the computer/mathematical sciences
• Engineers and scientists?
• Faculty and postdoctoral researchers? Graduate
  students? Undergraduates?

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Delivering the central message
Tamara G. Kolda, 2002

• What did you do? Why is it important?
• Whats the one-sentence summary of your talk that
  the audience should walk away with?
• Tune your message to your audience
• Symbolic knowledge improves statistical
  techniques for cross-language topic detection and
  generation of short summaries to represent
  foreign-language news articles
• Generation of English headlines for foreign news
  stories is enhanced when our algorithms use
  linguistic knowledge
• Repeat the message over and over again throughout
  the talk
• Keep the content of the talk focused on the
  central message

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Slide Organization
Tamara G. Kolda, 2002

• Sample outline of a research talk
• Title slide credit to co-authors and funding
  agencies
• Up-front carrot (attention-getter)
• Outline (unless 10-15 min talk)
• Background material
• What you did
• new algorithm, theorem, proof, computational
  paradigm
• Why is it important
• numerical results
• contribution
• Summary and future work

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Background Material

• Minimize background material
• At least 2/3 of talk should be original work
• Identify those who have done related work and
  spell their names correctly!Hint People love to
  hear their own names.
• Describe motivating applications that will later
  tie into your results

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What you did

• Emphasize your simple message repeatedly
• Back it up with details of algorithm and theory
• Use pictures and diagrams as much as possible in
  lieu of wordy explanation
• Keep notation to a minimum and avoid too many
  abbreviations
• Never use equation numbersrepeat the equation if
  necessary
• Illustrate your points via simple examples

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How do you present an algorithm?
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(No Transcript)
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Tables and Figures

• Tables
• Dont make font too small
• Use color for emphasis
• Figures
• Be sure axes are clearly labeled
• Use color to differentiate lines
• Dont just copy verbatim out of a conference
  paper!

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Why is it important?

• Think BIG PICTURE!
• Emphasize an application
• What makes it a hard problem?
• Why should people care?

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Summary and Future Work

• Repeat what you did
• Repeat why it is important
• Future work is important for recent PhDs because
  it shows you are thinking beyond your thesis
  problem
• Include contact info at the end
• email, web page

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Fielding Questions

• Repeat the question.
• Talk.
• Demonstrate knowledge of standard problem
  solving.
• Draw a diagram.
• Specify an analogy.
• List the assumptions.
• List the ideas and tools that seem relevant.
• Respect the questioners and their questions
• Inevitably, someone will tell you your work has
  already been done by someone else!

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Oral Exam or Thesis Defense

• Practice!!!!
• Observe and try to emulate excellent speakers
• Ask in advance what examiners will ask!
• Memorize a few key sentences.
• Get there early and set up!
• Cycle in on what you have done.
• Try to convey a sense of quiet confidence.

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Conference talk
Mark Hill, 1992

• Title/author/affiliation (1 slide)
• Forecast (1 slide)
• Outline (1 slide)
• Background
• Motivation and Problem Statement (1-2 slides)
• Related Work (0-1 slides)
• Methods (1 slide)
• Results (4-6 slides)
• Summary (1 slide)
• Future Work (0-1 slides)
• Backup Slides

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Academic Interview
Mark Hill, 1992

• Take a 20-minute conference talk.
• Expand the 5 minute intro to 20 minutes
• Do the rest of the conference talk, minus the
  summary and future work.
• Add 10 minutes of deeper stuff from your thesis.
• Do the summary and future work from the
  conference talk in a manner accessible to all.
• Add 10 ten minutes to survey all the other stuff
  you have done (to show your breadth).
• Save 5 minutes for questions (to show that you
  are organized).

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Take-Home Messages

• Know your audience
• Create a simple message and repeat it several
  times
• Allow plenty of time to prepare your talk
• Practice!
• Dont block the slides during the talk
• Speak slowly, clearly
• Dont run over on time
• Have fun and learn from your mistakes

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Thanks goes to

• http//www.si.umich.edu/pne/acadtalk.htm
• http//www.cs.dartmouth.edu/brd/Teaching/Giving-a
  -talk/giving-a-talk.html
• http//www.cs.dartmouth.edu/brd/Teaching/Giving-a
  -talk/phw.html
• http//www.cs.wisc.edu/markhill/conference-talk.h
  tml
• http//csmr.ca.sandia.gov/tgkolda/abstracts/givin
  g-a-talk-snl-2001.html