Tips for Oral Presentations

1. Tips for Oral Presentations

2. Why Give Oral Presentations? Effective communication is essential to show your work to the scientific community Journal articles are one way to do this. Presentations at seminars and conferences are another way.

3. Why Give Oral Presentations? Presentations at conferences are either posters or oral presentations. At the big statistical conferences (JSM and ENAR), about 80-90% of the presentations are talks.

4. General Format for Talks Session 273: Missing Data and Dropout in the Analysis of Longitudinal data--Contributed 2:05 pm Do Mixed Model and Multiple Imputations Work Together for Longitudinal Data Analysis with Missing Values? 2:20 pm A Two-part Model for Longitudinal Data with Missing Values 2:35 pm Analysis of Longitudinal Data with Nonmonotone, Nonignorable Missing Data ... 3:20 pm Mixed Effects Models for Truncated Longitudinal Outcome and Nonignorable Missing Data

5. Good slides Content Style Good delivery What Do You Need for a Good Talk? Good material = Good talk Not necessarily true!

6. Good Slides: Content Always start with a title slide Presentation title Authors Support Contact info

7. Good Slides: Content What the listener wants to know: What is the problem and why is it a problem? What has been done about it before? What is the presenter doing (or has done) about it? What additional value does the presenter’s approach provide? Where do we go from here? Organize your presentation to address those 5 questions.

8. Good Slides: Content Know who your audience is and put your material in a context suitable to the audience. Don’t present theoretical statistical development to an audience of MPH epidemiology students. At statistics conferences... aim your presentation to an audience of colleagues who know the concepts but not the details

9. General Format for Talks Session 273: Missing Data and Dropout in the Analysis of Longitudinal data--Contributed 2:05 pm Do Mixed Model and Multiple Imputations Work Together for Longitudinal Data Analysis with Missing Values? 2:20 pm A Two-part Model for Longitudinal Data with Missing Values 2:35 pm Analysis of Longitudinal Data with Nonmonotone, Nonignorable Missing Data ... 3:20 pm Mixed Effects Models for Truncated Longitudinal Outcome and Nonignorable Missing Data

10. Good Slides: Content Remember the goal: Your objective is to communicate an appreciation of the importance of your work, not just to lay the results out. You always can and should give references and a way to contact you so those interested in the theoretical details can follow up with the literature or with you. Providing handouts is a good idea

11. Good Slides: Content 25 mins. worth of talk crammed into 15 minutes 25 mins. worth of talk dragged out for 45 minutes Budget your time carefully

12. Good Slides: Content Allow enough time to describe the problem you address clearly enough for the audience to appreciate the value of your contribution. This usually will take more than 30 seconds. Leave enough time to present your own contribution clearly. This almost never will require all of the allotted time.

13. Good Slides: Style 1. Use simple fonts like Arial or Tahoma, not ornate fonts like Times New Roman or Corsiva. 1. Use simple fonts like Arial or Tahoma, not ornate fonts like Times New Roman or Corsiva.

14. Good Slides: Style 2. Use 24 point type or bigger. 2. Use 24 point type or bigger.

15. Good Slides: Style 1. Use 24 point type or bigger. 2. Use simple fonts like Arial or Tahoma, not ornate fonts like Times New Roman or Corsiva. 3. Try to limit the material to 8 lines per slide. Summarize the main points – don’t include every detail of what you plan to say. 1. Use 24 point type or bigger. 2. Use simple fonts like Arial or Tahoma, not ornate fonts like Times New Roman or Corsiva. 3. Try to limit the material to 8 lines per slide. Summarize the main points – don’t include every detail of what you plan to say.

16. Good Slides: Style • 3. Try to limit the material to 8 lines per slide. • Summarize the main points • Don’t include every detail of what you plan to say • Bullets can be effective

17. Sample characteristics Blood Pressure Status Normotensive Pre-ypertensive Hypertensive p SBP 103.4 + 0.16 109.1 + 0.27 110.4 + 0.41 0.0001 DBP 63.9 + 0.13 66.2 + 0.23 68.8 + 0.35 0.0001 Pulse Pressure 39.7 + 0.15 42.6 + 0.26 41.5 + 0.39 0.0001 MAP 76.9 + 0.13 80.6 + 0.22 82.7 + 0.33 0.0001 BMI 19.6 + 0.9 20.5 + 0.15 21.5 + 0.21 0.0001 SS skinfold 10.9 + 0.17 12.7 + 0.29 14.2 + 0.45 0.0001 TR skinfold 14.8 + 0.13 16.3 + 0.23 17.8 + 0.34 0.0001 Triglycerides 59.3 + 1.01 62.0 + 1,01 65.1 + 1.02 0.0001 Insulin 9.2 + 1.01 9.9 + 1.02 11.6 + 1.04 0.0001 Insulin Resistance 1.86 + 0.0001 2.16 + 0.0004 2.77 + 0.0011 0.0001 Glucose 81.3 + 0.24 84.3 + 0.41 85.9 + 0.62 0.0001 HDL 59.2 + 0.35 58.5 + 0.59 58.4 + 0.88 ns LDL 90.6 + 0.54 91.5 + 0.91 93.3 + 1.4 ns Total Cholesterol 158.3 + 0.58 158.8 + 0.98 161.1 + 1.46 ns Good Slides: Style

18. Good Slides: Style 4. Limit the tables to 4 rows/columns for readability. Sacrifice content for legibility – unreadable content is worse than useless.

19. Good Slides: Style 5. For slides, use light letters (yellow or white) on a dark background (e.g., dark blue). Limit the number of colors in your text. 5. For slides, use light letters (yellow or white) on a dark background (e.g., dark blue). Limit the number of colors in your text.

20. Good Slides: Style 6. Don’t put a lot of curves on a graphical display – busy graphical displays are hard to read. Label your graphs clearly with BIG, READABLE TYPE Legends are absolutely necessary

21. Good Slides: Style When we obtain 7. Use equations sparingly if at all; avoid derivations.

22. Good Slides: Style 8. Keep it simple. The fact that you can include all kinds of cute animation pictures etc does not mean that you should.

23. Good Slides: Style 9. Always purview your slides. ______ There’s no excuse for a misspelled word on a slide. Careful about translating between different applications Fonts available on the computer where you made your slide may not be available on the computer that produces your slide.

24. Good Delivery: Timing Few things irritate an audience more than a 30 minute talk delivered in 15 minutes. • Present only as much material as can reasonably fit into the • time period allotted. • 1 slide per minute Talk at a pace that everybody in the audience can understand. Speak slowly, clearly, and loudly, especially if your English is heavily accented.

25. Good Delivery: Timing PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE. Balance the amount of material you present with a reasonable pace of presentation. If you feel rushed when you practice, then you have too much material.

26. Good Delivery: Timing PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE. Alone: in the mirror Ask a colleague to judge your presentation, delivery, clarity of language, and use of time. Don’t bounce, pace, jangle your keys, or twist your rings. Make sure you do not block the screen.

27. Good Delivery: Presentation The audience wants to hear what you have to say The audience knows how to read Autopilot effect Don’t apologize

28. Good Delivery: Presentation Beware the laser pointer but don’t point at the computer screen Don’t apologize for incomplete results. Researchers understand that all research continues. Just present the results and let the audience judge.

29. Good Delivery: Audience Manners Take all questions seriously, no matter how stupid you think a particular question is. Be diplomatic. Duplicate questions still deserve answers It’s okay if your answer is “I don’t know”. Invite persistent questioners to discuss the topic with you after the session.

30. Presentation Tips Resources Many of these tips are culled from the ENAR guidelines to effective presentations. www.enar.org Also see Freeman, DH, Gonzalez, ME, Hoaglin, DC, &Kilss, BA. (1983). Presenting statistical papers. American Statistician, 37:106-110 Becker, RA & Keller-McNulty, S. (1996). Presentation myths. American Statistician, 50:112-115

31. Upcoming Events Sept. 30: no meeting Oct. 7: Dr. Cruz Velasco Oct. 14: Janet Rice journal club format Oct. 21: Dr. Don Mercante