Once again about the presentations. Obvious basics that most neglect. Part one

By virtue of my profession, I speak and attend conferences, seminars, meetings of working groups, lectures, etc. Very often, almost always, the quality of the presentation of presentations is quite low, even despite the irreproachable understanding of the material presented by the speaker. Perhaps this is due to the fact that we do not have lessons, lectures and courses included in the standard educational process. Therefore, everyone makes reports who are in that much to the best of their understanding of the beautiful. However, some basic knowledge about the creation of the report should be. And they can be found, for example, in the manual for $$$\ LaTeX$package BEAMER, created just for the preparation of presentations. But it's not about this particular package and not about $$$\ TeX$-e, and section 5 of part I of this guide, which contains general guidelines for preparing reports. And, since, for the most part, they are fully consistent with my ideas, I decided to make a translation for familiarization by a wide audience, while retaining, as far as possible, the style and formatting.

Just a couple of comments:

1) the BEAMER package operates with different slide and frame concepts (the presentation consists of a series of frames, each frame, in turn, consists of several slides), but this does not affect the perception of the text;
2) TeX teams will meet several times in the text, but, in the context, they will not require an explanation.

5 Recommendations for creating presentations

In this section, we outline recommendations that we try to follow when creating presentations. These recommendations arise either from experience, from common sense, or from the recommendations of other people or books. These rules, of course, should not be construed as commandments, which, in the event of non-compliance, will lead to a catastrophe. The basic rule of typography is also applicable to the creation of presentations: Any rule can be broken, but none can be ignored.
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5.1 Structuring a presentation

5.1.1 Understanding Time Limits

When you start creating a presentation, the very first thing you need to worry about is the amount of time you have for your report. Depending on the circumstances, it can be from 2 minutes to two hours.

• The simple rule for the number of frames is that you should have no more than one frame per minute.
• In most cases, you will have less time to report than you would like.
• Do not try to cram into the presentation more than time allows . It does not matter how important some details seem to you, it is better to omit them, but to clearly state the basic idea than to convey neither the main meaning nor the details.

In many situations, a quick assessment of how much time you have will show that you cannot mention some subtleties. This knowledge can save you many hours of slide preparation work, which in any case you will need to delete later anyway.

5.1.2 Global structure

In order to create a “global structure” of the presentation, given the time constraints, proceed as follows:

• In your mind, make a list of what you can reasonably say within the allotted time.
• Break the list into sections and subsections.
• For very long reports (for example, a 90-minute lecture), you can also divide your presentation into independent parts (for example, “review of the previous part of the lecture” and “main part”) using the \ part command. It should be noted that each part has its own table of contents.
• Do not be afraid to change the structure later when working on a report.

Parts, sections and subsections

• Do not use more than four or less than two sections in each part.

Even the four sections are, in fact, too many if they do not adhere to a very light structure. Five or more sections are simply too difficult for the audience to remember. In the end, when you show the table of contents, the audience is not yet able to grasp the importance and interconnection of the various sections and most likely will forget about them by the time you get to them.

• Ideally, the table of contents should be self-explanatory. In particular, it should be understandable before someone hears your speech.
• Make the names of sections and subsections self-sufficient.
• Both sections and subsections must follow a logical scheme.
• Start by explaining what your report is about. (Do not think everyone knows that.
  The Law on the Clueless Audience states: Someone important in the audience always knows less than you think everyone should know, even if you take the Law on the Clueless Audience into account.)
• Then explain that you or someone else found out on the merits of the topic.
• Always end your speech with a conclusion that repeats the main idea of ​​the report in a short and simple form. People pay the most attention to the beginning and end of the report. Summary - your "second chance" to bring the idea.
• You can also add a part with the addition command \ appendix .
  Put in this part everything that you really are not going to talk about, but it can come in handy when asked questions.
• Do not use subsections, they are evil.

annotation

In articles, abstract gives a summary of the entire work in approximately 100 words. It is intended to help readers evaluate whether they need to read the entire article or not.

• Since it is unlikely that your listeners will run away after the first slide, an annotation is usually not needed in the presentation.
• However, if you can give a good, concise wording of your report, you may want to insert an abstract.
• If you insert an annotation, make sure that this is not some long text, but only a very brief idea.
• Never, never use the abstract from the article for presentation, except when the abstract is “We have shown that $$$P = NP$“Or“ We have shown that $$$P \ neq NP$“
• If your annotation is one of the above two, double check whether your evidence is correct.

Numbered theorems and definitions

The usual way of global structuring (in mathematics) of articles and books is to use sequentially numbered definitions and theorems. Unfortunately, for presentations the situation is a bit more complicated, and we would like to discourage the use of numbered theorems in the presentation. Listeners will never remember these numbers. Never say "now, by Theorem 2.5, which I showed you before, we get ..." It would be much better to refer to, say, Kummer's theorem instead of Theorem 2.5. If Theorem 2.5 is of some small nature, without its own name (unlike the Kummer Theorem or the Main Theorem or the Second Main Theorem or the Key Lemma), then the audience will forget about it anyway by the time you refer to it again.

In our opinion, the only situation in which the numbering of the theorems makes sense in the presentation is the lecture, during which students can read notes in parallel with this lecture, where the theorems are numbered exactly the same.

If you give theorems and definitions of numbers, number them all consecutively. Thus, if there is one theorem, one lemma, and one definition, you get Theorem 1, Lemma 2 and Definition 3. Some people prefer to number all three by number 1. We would strongly like to warn against this. The problem is that it makes it almost impossible to find something if Theorem 2 can go after Definition 10 or vice versa. Articles and, even worse, books that have Theorem 1 and Definition 1 hurt.

• Do not hurt other people.

Bibliography

You can also provide a list of references at the end of your report so that people can see what kind of “additional literature” is possible. When adding a bibliography to a presentation, keep the following in mind:

• A bad idea to present a long bibliography in a presentation. Show a very small number of links. (Naturally, this refers only to the report itself, and not to the handout.)
• If you submit more links than fit on one slide, you can almost be sure that none of them will be remembered.
• Show links only if they are intended as “additional literature.” Do not do as you usually do in articles.
• You do not have to submit a long list of all your other great works if they do not relate to your report.
• Using the \ cite command can be confusing, since it is unlikely that the audience will keep the link in memory. If you refer to a publication, always quote the full name of the author and the year as “[Tantau, 2003]” instead of “[2,4]” or “[Tan01, NT02]”.
• If you want to be humble, you can shorten your name when quoting yourself as
  "[Nickelsen and T., 2003]" or "[Nickelsen and T, 2003]". However, this can lead to confusion for listeners, since it is often not immediately clear who this is "T." We recommend using full name.

5.1.3 Frame Structure

Just like the entire presentation, each frame must also be structured. For a frame filled exclusively with some long text is very difficult to follow. It is your job to structure the contents of each frame in such a way that, ideally, the public will immediately see which information is important, which is optional, how the information presented is connected, and so on.

Frame name

• Place a header on each frame. The header explains the contents of the frame to people who do not follow all the details on the slide.
• The heading should really explain , not just give an encrypted resume, which cannot be understood until the entire slide is understood. For example, a name like “Overview of the Definition of the Plague” will make everyone wrestle about what this slide might be about. The names of the type “Overview of the Definition of Partially Ordered Sets (CEMs)” or “Partial Ordering on the Columns of the Genotype Matrix” are much more informative.
• Ideally, titles on consecutive frames should “tell a story” by themselves.
• In English, in the frame name you must either always write all words with a capital letter, except for the articles “a” or “the” (as in the name), or always use regular lower case letters. Do not mix; stick to one rule. The same is true for block headers. For example, do not write the name “A short Review of Turing machines.” Either use “A Short Review of Turing Machines.” Or “A short review of Turing machines.” (Turing is still capitalized since this is the name) .
• In English, the name of the entire document should be written in capital letters, regardless of what else you write in capital letters.
• In German and other languages ​​in which there are many words with capital letters, always use the correct uppercase / lowercase letters. Never write in capital letters in addition to what is usually written.

How much can I put on the frame?

• The smaller the frame, the better. A regular frame should contain from 20 to 40 words. Maximum - about 80 words.
• Do not assume that everyone in the audience is an expert on the subject under discussion. Even if the people listening to you would be experts, the last time they could hear about things that you consider obvious several years ago. You should always have time to quickly remind you of what a “semantic complexity class” or “partially ordered set” is.
• Never put anything on a slide that you are not going to explain at the time of the report, even to impress someone with how really your topic is complex. However, you can explain what the slide does not have.
• Keep it simple. Typically, your audience will see a slide in less than 50 seconds. They will not have time to puzzle over long sentences or complex formulas.
• Lance Fortnow, a computer science professor, says PowerPoint users are doing better. His consideration: Since PowerPoint is so bad for typing math expressions, its users use less math, making their reports easier to understand. There is some truth in this, in our opinion. The tremendous possibilities for a set of TEX mathematical formulas can easily tempt you to use much more formulas than is necessary and beneficial to health. For example, instead of writing “Since $$$| {x \ in \ {0,1 \} * | x \ sqsubseteq y} | <\ infty$ we have ... "use" Since $$$y$has only a finite number of prefixes, we have .. ”You will be surprised how much mathematical text can be reformulated into simple English or simply omitted. Naturally, if in fact you are discussing some kind of math problem like in a math lecture, use the possibilities $$$\ TeX$And how much you want.

Frame structuring

• Use block environments such as block , theorem , proof , example , and so on.
• Prefer numbered and unordered lists instead of plain text.
• Use the description environment when defining several things.
• Do not use more than two levels of nesting in lists. BEAMER supports three levels, but you should not use this third level. In general, you should not use even the second. Instead, enjoy good graphics.
• Do not create endless numbered and unnumbered lists.
• Do not disclose lists by piece.
• Accents are an important part of creating a structure. Use the \ alert command to highlight important things. This can be a single word or an entire sentence. However, do not abuse the selection, as this will nullify the result.
• Use columns.
• Never use footnotes. They unnecessarily disrupt the flow of reading. Either what is said in the footnote is important and should be placed in plain text, or it does not matter and should be omitted ( especially in the presentation).
• Use quote or quotation to insert text in quotes.
• Do not use the allowframebreaks option except for long bibliographies.
• Do not use long bibliographies.

Text writing

• Use short sentences.
• Prefer phrases to full sentences. For example, instead of “The picture on the left shows the Turing machine, the picture on the right shows the state machine.” Try “On the left: the Turing machine. Right: The state machine. ”Even better, turn it into a list or description.
• Place punctuation marks correctly: no punctuation after phrases, full punctuation in and after complete sentences.
• Never use a smaller font size to "fit more on the frame." Never , never use the perverse shrink option.
• Do not carry the words. If absolutely necessary, transfer the words "manually" using the \ - command.
• Manually break lines with the \\ command. Do not rely on automatic line breaks. Tear where there is a logical pause. For example, good gaps in the "ribbon alphabet are larger than the input alphabet" before the word "more" and before "input." Bad gaps either before the "alphabet" or before "than."
• The text and numbers on the charts should be the same size as the plain text. Unreadable numbers along the axes usually destroy the diagram and its meaning.

5.1.4 Interactive elements

Imagine that during the presentation you want to present your slides in a perfectly linear style, presumably by pressing the PgDn key for each slide. However, there are various reasons why you should deviate from this linear order:

• Your presentation may contain “different levels of detail”, which may or may not be missed or deployed, depending on the response of the audience.
• You have been asked questions and you want to show additional slides.
• You show a complex picture and you need to “reduce” various parts to explain the details.
• You have been asked questions about the previous slide that will make you find, and then go to that slide.

In reality, you cannot prepare for questions of this kind. In this case, you can use the navigation bar and symbols to find the slide you are interested in (see 8.2.3).
Regarding the first three types of deviations, there are several things to prepare for a “planned detour” or “planned slice”.

• You can add “Skip” buttons. When such a button is pressed, you skip over a certain part of your report. The skip button has two advantages compared to simply pressing the “forward” key: first, you find yourself in the right place and, secondly, marking this button can give the audience visual feedback on what exactly will be missed. For example, when you click the skip button that says “Skip proof”, no one will start to puzzle over what you want to skip.
• You can add an attachment to your report. The application is “completely isolated” from the main report. Only when you enter the application section (presumably through a hyperlink), the structure of the application becomes visible. You can put all the frames that are not going to show during the normal course of your report, but which you would like to have on hand in case anyone asks in this add-on.
• You can add Go and Back buttons to create workarounds. Pressing the Go button will transfer to a specific part of the presentation, where you can show additional details. In this part, the return button is on each slide, which will allow you to jump back to the place where the Go button was pressed.
• In BEAMER, you can use the \ againframe command to "continue" the frames that you previously created somewhere, but dropped some details. You can use the \ againframe command much later, for example, only in the application, to show additional slides there.
• In BEAMER, you can use the \ framezoom command to create a link for scaling part of a complex slide.

5.2 Using graphics

Graphics often convey concepts or ideas much more efficiently than text: a picture can say more than a thousand words. (Although, sometimes a word can say more than a thousand drawings.)

• Place (at least) one timeline on each slide whenever possible. Visualization helps listeners incredibly.
• As a rule, the graphics are located to the left of the text. (Use the environment columns .) When reading from left to right, we first look to the left.
• Graphs should have the same typographical parameters as text: use the same fonts (of the same size) in the graphic as in the main text. The small dot on the chart should be exactly the same size as the small dot in the text. The line width must be the same as the width of the line used to create the glyphs of the font. For example, 11pt, the Computer Modern non-greasy font has a stroke width of 0.4pt.
• While bitmaps, such as photographs, can be much more colorful than the rest of the text, vector graphics should follow the same “color logic” as the main text (black = normal lines, red = highlighted parts, green = examples, blue = structure).
• As in the text, you must explain everything that is shown in the graph. The unexplained details puzzle the audience if there was something important that they missed. Be careful when importing graphs from an article or other source. Usually they have much more details than you can explain and they should be radically simplified.
• Sometimes the complexity of the graphics is deliberate, and you are ready to spend a lot of time explaining the image in the smallest detail. In this case, you will often encounter the problem that small details of the schedule are difficult to distinguish among the listeners. In this case, you should use a command of the \ framezoom type to approximate the supposed interesting parts of the graphic object, see section 11.3.

5.3 Using Animated Effects and Transitions

• Use animation to explain system dynamics, algorithms, etc.
• Do not use animation only to attract the attention of your audience. This often distracts attention from the main topic of the slide. No matter how cool the spin is, how much the flying theorem looks and no matter how hard you feel that your audience needs some action to be happy, most people in the audience will usually feel that you are entertaining them.
• Do not use distracting special effects, such as “dissolving” a slide, unless you have a very good reason for this. If you already use, use them rarely. They can be useful in some situations: for example, you can show a boy on a slide and you may want this slide to disappear and turn into a slide showing an adult instead. In this case, the dissolution gives the audience that visual image that the boy “slowly becomes” a man.