
The Three Slide Rule - jgrahamc
http://blog.jgc.org/2011/09/three-slide-rule.html
======
dhimes
jgc has two articles on the front page of HN, and both are sweeping
generalizations that, in essence, miss the point entirely. In this one, about
presentations, he fails to understand that _how_ you present is not to be
separated from _what_ you present. I too have heard lectures where somebody
reads from notes. They are often awful.

Without writing my own tome (which would obviously be flawed), I'll simply
implore you to consider the following question when putting your presentation
together: Are you trying to teach or to persuade?

If persuading, keeping it entirely verbal may be effective (if you are good at
such things). However, if teaching, most evidence points to opening up as many
sensory channels as possible to get the information across. Usually, that
means verbal and visual.

The most important thing is to structure your talk so that the audience's mind
is engaged. A simple trick to help is to ask questions (even if rhetorically),
then reveal the answer.

In other words, it's _how_ you use the slides, not _whether_ you use the
slides.

Same with pie charts, btw (the other offending article).

EDIT: emphasis

~~~
jgrahamc
The teaching vs. persuading argument is very interesting, and I'd urge you to
write about these thoughts even if they are, to use your words, flawed.

~~~
dhimes
Briefly, and off the top of my head, if you are trying to _persuade_ , you
want people to only consider the information you present. You are trying to
show people a single line of reasoning that leads to an outcome that, by the
time you get there, will seem "obvious." It actually works in your favor if
they can't keep all of the argument in their head, because then they'll only
be focusing on what you are saying right now (and jumping to the conclusion
you've compelled) and not looking for ways to examine the veracity or any
limiting conditions of what you are saying.

On the other hand, when teaching anything with a conceptual framework (that
is, not just showing people how to install Wordpress), it's good to show not
only the result, or examples of "truth," but also counterexamples. It's often
useful to help define a concept by also saying what it is _not_. You want
people to see all of the evidence and to be able to provide their own reasons
as to the conclusion. You are clear, open, and even emphatic about assumptions
or limiting conditions (at least to the point where it causes no harm to leave
out and would only increase confusion if included).

If you happen to be so lucky as to have a room full of people who all share
the same conceptual framework and vocabulary, then standing up and telling a
story can also be an effective teaching tool. Mostly, however, we are being
introduced to the vocabulary as we are being taught, and multiple channels of
reinforcement are very helpful.

~~~
danmaz74
I would argue that the kind of persuasion you can get with this technique is
most often shallow and short lived. If you fail to make strong impressions, to
stimulate emotionally your audience, and to give counterexamples, it's very
difficult to create real changes in people's mind. Especially if you are
talking about subjects that really matter to your audience.

~~~
dhimes
I agree with your recipe in general, but the main point is that your
counterexamples are selected to strengthen your main point, not to point out
its flaws.

------
skrebbel
Love it. However, I think that this does not apply to every situation. It's
fine for presentations at conferences, or presentations designed to convince
an audience of a certain view or standpoint.

But if you've been asked to research a set of options for viability, for
example, things are different. You'll need bullet-points with highlights,
tables with totals, and conclusions that summarize the main differences. Such
things are very well presented with slides. I believe that this is the kind of
stuff Powerpoint was originally invented for.

Similar stuff if I'm going to explain Coffeescript to a room full of C#
programmers; I want examples, on slides.

There's probably more examples like these. The moment you want the audience to
make up their own mind (which option do I prefer? do I want to use
Coffeescript?), you need to present facts, not just a story. I strongly doubt
just telling people how cool Coffeescript's => operator is will get the point
across very well.

If my audience wants hard facts, I'm going to put it on slides, whether or not
my CEO has a 3 slide rule.

~~~
lloeki
> _It's fine for presentations at conferences_

Even then, the approach taken by Lawrence Lessig (hundreds of slides, very
rythmic), makes the point across. Yet the slides alone are worth nothing
without the presenter.

The biggest mistake is to think that the slides contain the message, a mistake
often shared both by the presenter and the audience. How many times have I
heard "can we get a copy of those slides?". If I ever hear this question it
means I have failed as a presenter.

It's useless and missing the point to ask for the slides. Slides are not the
vector of the argument, you – the presenter – are; Slides are merely here to
outline the point.

Nobody reads the bullets _and_ listen to you at the same time. Nobody will
read those tables projected on that small screen at a jittery resolution. It
could be bogus data and no one would care yet their mind will focus on it
instead of what you say. You built a table to compute a total, so only the
total matters. Guess what? Just show the total. Your discourse will expose
what the bullets say, your discourse will sum up what's in the tables. Then
you nail it by showing the total slide. If people do want the table to check
values then its place is not in the slides, it's in a report. A document with
_content_ that you hopefully provide when it matters. Slides on the opposite
should basically have a very low content ratio in contrast with your speech,
or people will simply be distracted from you and read. Worse, they will
unconsciously wonder why they're here listening to you when they could just as
well read the content by themselves, and end up getting bored.

~~~
fsniper
"The biggest mistake is to think that the slides contain the message, a
mistake often shared both by the presenter and the audience. How many times
have I heard "can we get a copy of those slides?". If I ever hear this
question it means I have failed as a presenter." I can not agree more. A
presentation must be a tool to support your ideas, your information, your
thoughts. Not the way around.

~~~
epo
I don't think it means anything at all. People mostly ask for slide decks out
of reflex, often because they weren't paying attention because they know they
can get the slides later on.

~~~
lloeki
We live in the same world indeed, so imagine what it means to get out of the
room _without having even remotely been asked the question_.

(ok this could mean you totally crapped out, but I guess you could tell the
difference)

------
scott_s
If I'm presenting my research (which is what I do almost every time I
present), then I need to do two things: teach the audience about what I did,
and show it was worth it with performance results.

As dhimes points out, teaching is different than persuading. If I'm going to
teach something, I need figures. Words alone are not enough. In high school
and college, my teachers would fill black-boards with figures and equations
while they explained things. The first thing my intro to physics professors
would always do is draw a picture. That's what I'm doing, except I don't draw
my figures one-the-fly as they did. Think about when you first learned the
various sorting algorithms. Would you have understood them without watching
someone work through examples, moving numbers around as the algorithm
progressed? This is very much the same thing.

As for performance results, I need to show multiple graphs that test various
aspects of the system to give the audience the impression that everything
works as advertised. (Just an impression is enough - they'll read the full
paper if they're interested in being thoroughly convinced.) Just showing the
graphs isn't enough, of course. I always take the time to explain what the
experiment was in the first place, what the axes are, what each plotted line
means, and which direction is "good" (for example, if it's scale-up, high is
"good"). Finally, in case none of that sinks in, I explicitly tell them, "What
we learned from this graph is: ___."

These things are probably going to require more than three slides.

------
jonnathanson
If a presentation can be fit into three slides, then why use slides at all? At
that point, it seems better suited to a one-page Word doc. To wit: one of the
most effective short-form idea communication tools I've ever seen is the
infamous "P&G Memo" used by Procter & Gamble. It's worth Googling, absorbing,
and pressing into service. You'd be amazed at how pretty much any complex idea
can be condensed into a single page -- not to mention how much more readily it
will be received and digested, which is the entire point of communication.

As for Powerpoint and Keynote, reserve those for actual presentations (i.e.,
delivered live in front of an audience). Try to avoid them as handouts or
passed-around documents, unless requested by the recipient (And even then,
politely push back if possible; most people have been conditioned to ask for
PPTs when they don't really need, or even want them).

~~~
Game_Ender
The "P&G Memo" is very similar to Toyota's "A3 Process". The whole idea is to
clearly and concisely explain (with visuals) a complex technical point. In
Toyota's case it's so that at a meeting everyone can just spend a few minutes
reading the report, instead of 30-60 minutes in front of a presentation.

------
alexholehouse
I feel like slides should almost act like a prompt to me (the speaker) as
opposed to presenting critical information. I am also a feverish believer that
throwing out a huge amount of technical content in a presentation is (often,
though obviously not always) pointless. Unless you're speaking to a _very_
specific audience, numbers should be presented in a graphical form which makes
it easy to get the gist in a single glance.

This is just my experience, and admittedly is largely limited to the academic
world, but when someone stands up and has a table with five columns, five
rows, and numbers to eight significant figures I immediately switch off!

------
rnadna
I used to use powerpoint for my classes. A few years ago, something messed up,
and I could only use the blackboard. Guess what? Best. Class. Ever. Now, my
scheme is to teach the way people taught 100 years ago. I talk to my students.
I write important things on the board (at, it should be said, the exact same
speed as they can take notes). I have a stack of slides with illustrations of
things that are too complicated to draw on the board, and I select from this
stack occasionally. (Those slides are also on the course website, so students
can print them if they want to insert them in their notes.) All of this works
very well. At first, the students are freaked out by the fact that they have
to attend class, and pay attention, and take notes. But, in the end, quite a
lot of the class reviews point out that the blackboard is much better than
powerpoint.

------
mixmax
A presentation is someone telling a story. it's an emotionel Endeavour, not a
presentation of facts. if it was you could just write a report or send out a
memo. As a presenter you need to bear this in mind.

Like any other story it should be engaging, interesting, fun and memorable. It
should also have a beginning and an end. If you think of your slides in this
context things change. Their goal is to amplify your point, make a technical
point clearer, or something Else to underline what you're saying. The main
focus should be the speaker, not the slides.

If you want to see a true Master look at some of Steve Jobs keynotes. There
are three kind of slides:

\- pictures to show what the product looks like.

\- short bullets to give an overview (a phone, an iPod, an internet
communications device)

\- simple graphs to show a point or a trend.

~~~
hugh3
_A presentation is someone telling a story. it's an emotionel Endeavour, not a
presentation of facts. if it was you could just write a report or send out a
memo. As a presenter you need to bear this in mind._

Not always. For instance, a scientist gives oral presentations at conferences,
and goes to see oral presentations by others, because verbal communication
with visual aids is a more effective form of communication than written. I can
get a better idea of what someone else is doing by having them explain it to
me for ten minutes than by spending ten minutes reading their words on
paper... even though I can read words far faster than they can speak 'em.

I hate being overwhelmed by slides, so I've tried adapting some of these sorts
of techniques to scientific talks, but I just can't. I'm not selling
something, I'm trying to communicate huge slabs of information in limited
time. A talk with visual aids has a greater information bandwidth than one
without.

Besides, redundant text on your slides is an important insurance policy, to
make sure you don't forget to say something. If you've got time to practice
your talk over and over then this isn't important, but if you write your
slides two days before the talk and practice it once in your hotel room then
they're helpful.

------
michaels0620
One of the major issues with slides is that too often they are designed to be
usable without the presentation. Often times they are emailed to people who
were not in attendance.

You end up in the worst of both worlds: a presentation where the presenter is
nearly irrelevant (I can read slides too) and notes that are spread across too
many slides to be useful.

It takes extra work, but developing one slide set for presentation and another
set of materials (not necessarily slides) for reference works 1000x better.

~~~
skmurphy
An article or other write-up is a better "leave behind" alternative. You can
include all of the points you made that were not on the slides and even a FAQ
to substitute for audience questions.

------
omegant
I have noticed something, when I watch a movie with subtitles ( I am from
Spain) even if it is in english, if I pay attention to the text I "
disconnect" from the cinversation taking place. My attention gets focused in
reading and I find difficult doing both at the same time. I don't see it as a
good way to learn a language. I never thought about powerpoints though. It is
an interesting idea....

------
trocker
Excellent article. Its so true - these days people concentrate on increasing
the slide numbers to make it appear as if there is a lot of content in it.No
wonder, people hate most of the presentations these days.

'Words' and 'Expressions' along with a meaningful message are the best ways to
communicate yourself across to a room full of people. Some visual material is
as much important but only 'useful' material.

Rather than wasting your time on thinking 'how to fill N number of slides', it
will be a lot more useful if we know our material, practice our material and
choose our words carefully. Practice how to engage audience, than trying to
make awesome visuals to enchant them with your slide making skills.

Why 'three slide' rule?

Lets make it a 'one' slide rule! :)

------
eldina
I majored in a different field, but am now in the last part of an education in
software design. At my present school, I have come to despise slides for
anything but short presentations. In particular, the use of slides as the main
ingredient in lectures is a disease. It is a general rule, rather than an
exception at this place, that lectures consist of flipping through slides
being almost verbatim copies of the material in the used text book at a rate
of 0.75 slide/min on average during 90 minutes of lecture. Lectures add no
value this way, but it seems like lecturers use "producing" slides as an alibi
for having prepared a proper lecture.

------
friggeri
I have a similar rule, but my metric isn't slides but words: for a 20 minutes
talk, I try keep the word count in my slide deck under 100 words.

More generally, I strongly believe that slides are only here as an
illustration of what I say, they shouldn't be that useful without me talking
in front of them.

As an example, here is a slide deck I used for a talk I gave at the MIT a few
months back: <http://vimeo.com/24471964>

------
DanielBMarkham
I've become a big fan of Beyond Bullet-points.

I had a large client where I was doing a lot of Agile training. As part of
that, I created a series of workshops around putting together a backlog when
starting a project. There was no text -- it was simply pictures and me telling
a story with them.

Two very interesting things happened. First, the students loved it. I'd
talk/present for ten minutes or so, then we'd do stuff. Repeat and rinse.
There was never a big wall of text for them to absorb, and I never read from
anything. They were always _doing stuff_. And since it was stuff related to
their specific project, even better.

The second thing was completely unexpected. The customer had a very mixed
response to my material! It seems that they wanted something with a lot of
text so that they could "teach" it themselves. A narrative, story-focused
presentation that was integrated into the team's work was simply too
difficult. They wanted a presentation that read like a textbook.

As far as being a good consultant goes, I'm not sure if I did a good thing or
a bad thing in terms of the customer's long-term goals. But as far as the
people I'm helping? I'm sticking to pictures and stories. Nobody wants to live
through another Powerpoint hell, and I have no desire to put anybody through
it again.

------
neonkiwi
A great read on the topic exists in book format, _The Cognitive Style of
PowerPoint,_ by data visualization expert Edward Tufte.

Part of this book is freely available, discussing the involvement of
PowerPoint in the Columbia disaster:

[http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=0...](http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=0001yB&topic_id=1)

The entire book is short, and only $7 from the author:

<http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_pp>

------
snowtiger
3 slides? too sharp... however, author expresses nice opinion - we tend to
work way too much for technical stuff and waaaay too less for the actual
content and message of the presentation

------
hm2k
If you employ a 3 slide rule what will happen is people will cram everything
onto 3 slides.

The best presentation I ever did followed these steps:

1\. Type out everything you want to say. Learn it. It should be easy to learn
because you should know your subject.

2\. Type out prompts as bullet points for each point your need to get across.
Learn them, you should only refer to them if you absolutely need to.

3\. Use slides to illustrate your point. You should NEVER be reading directly
from or using slides as prompts.

You are the presentation, not the slides.

------
rzezeski
I agree in general with the sentiment but don't like rule of an absolute # of
slides. To this day one of the best presentations I've ever seen had 500+
slides and is an example of what a good presentation looks/feels like.

<http://www.infoq.com/presentations/archaeopteryx-bowkett>

------
enduser
I thought this was going to be an article about a new kind of slide rule. As
in <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule>

------
moderation
My no longer maintained list of the the impact of Powerpoint is at
<http://sooper.org/misc/ppt/>

------
fsniper
I really liked the idea, "a presentation, being about content, not about
slides". But enforcing 3 slides per presentation is ridiculous.

A presentation should be balanced between content and visuals. Content should
be presented in a manner supported by visuals. You liked the graph because it
was essential and supporting the information being transmitted to you.

Also, filling a presentation with unnecessary information and talk would turn
the audience off and bore them.

So stopping and thinking before doing any writing down or creating any slides
is good behaviour leading good presentations.

------
skrebbel
I wonder whether all this would have been different if a ppt file (and
similar) wasn't commonly called "a presentation" but e.g. "a deck".

------
shithead
_Otherwise, it's like writing the introduction to a book before you've written
the book._

Isn't that the standard operating procedure?

------
NY_Entrepreneur
The main advice is old: "Typing is no substitute for thinking."

