Cephalopodcast - The Ocean Podcast

How not to overwhelm with Charts and Graphs

Over on the 43Folders blog, Matt Turk is asking how he can improve his academic presentation style.

I am in a fairly quantitative science…Unfortunately, what most people in my field do is to simply overwhelm the audience with lots of facts and charts and bullet points. Obviously this is a bad idea — but on the other hand, if you don’t give enough ’serious-looking’ plots, you run the risk of being dismissed by the majority of the people in the audience.

So how do I strike a balance? How do I keep my presentations in the manner of a good narrative, with appropriate display methods, when constrained by an audience that could liberally describe as ‘hostile’?

There are obligatory recommendations of Tufte, but also to The Craft of Research by Booth, Colomb, and Williams.

If you have any ideas about effectively communicating science information, head on over to 43Folders and chime in.