Tips for Giving a Good Talk CS 190 Winter 2002 Dr Eamonn Keogh

1. Tips for Giving a Good Talk CS 190 Winter 2002 Dr Eamonn Keogh Computer Science & Engineering DepartmentUniversity of California - RiversideRiverside,CA 92521eamonn@cs.ucr.edu Modified from the notes of Edward R. Tufte, Craig S. Kaplan, Eamonn Keogh and others

2. Outline • The CS 179 presentation • Why CS 179 students must give a presentation • What your presentation should be about • Advice on giving talks • General advice • Organization • Making clear overheads • Avoiding common pitfalls • Conclusion

3. Why CS 179 students must give a presentation • As a practical matter, I can’t spend more than two hours grading each project. This is an opportunity for you to draw attention to the high quality of your work • You can learn from your fellow students (you will still have some days to polish your work!) • Giving clear presentations is part of the design process!

4. What your presentation should be about • Since we have very limited time slots, I recommend you focus on one aspect of your work. For example… • Generating realistic random spatial queries for testing Rtrees • Elicitation by interviewing, our questionnaire based approach • Documenting code with the XYZ tool, some lessons learned

5. Show up early. You may have a chance to head off some technical or ergonomic problem • Have a backup plan. If your lecture is based on a PowerPoint presentation, have overhead backups of each page • Check out the room ahead of time. Before your talk, check out the room, and make sure it has everything you need • Never apologize. Most people wouldn’t have noticed the issues for which you’re apologizing—and it just sounds lame • Invest in a laser pointer. They are inexpensive, and are extremely useful • Rehearse timing. This is the most common sin

6. Overheads I • Use large fonts. On your Power Point presentation, use the biggest fonts realistically possible. Small fonts are hard to read • Use highlycontrastingcolors. • Avoid busy backgrounds. Keep the background simple. Too much in the background makes the text hard to read. • Avoid using red text. Red text is often hard to read. • AVOID ALL CAPS! All caps look like you're shouting. • Include a good combination of words, pictures, and graphics. A variety keeps the presentation interesting.

7. Overheads II • Be terse • The sales forecasts show an increase on the horizon. • Sales heading up • Use bullets or numbered items appropriately • Test your overheads days before your talk! • Outline of our method • Design • Implementation • Testing • Goals • Ease of use • Reusability • Reliability

8. Overheads III • Begin with an introduction slide (Who you are, why you are giving a talk, the title of the talk) • Next, give an outline (“roadmap”). For such a short talk, you might want to combine this with the above • State your point (one simple slide) • Demonstrate your point (a few slides) • Review your point (one simple slide) • End with a slide that reviews the entire talk • We introduced the TSP problem • We explained why it is an important problem • We explained why it is a hard problem • We introduced a new heuristic to solve TSP • We empirically demonstrated the utility of our approach

9. Annoying Personal Habits(This means you) • Playing with jewelry • Licking and/or biting your lips • Constantly adjusting your glasses • Popping the top of a pen • Playing with facial hair (men) • Playing with/twirling your hair (women) • Jingling change in your pocket • Leaning against anything for support • Fillers: “ah”, “um”, and “and” • Starting every sentence with the same word • Sticky floor syndrome • Avoiding eye contact • Lack of enthusiasm

10. Conclusions • We have explained why CS 179 students must give a talk • We have motivated the need for a high quality talk • We have seen various tips on creating high quality overheads • We have seen various hints on avoiding common pitfalls Questions?