

If you want to test a man's character give him power*point - mbriyo
http://www.outoftheborders.com/2009/12/if-you-want-to-test-mans-character-give.html
7 rules for effective presentations from slide:ology
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Kliment
Terrible. The assumption that powerpoint or any other slideware is an
effective way of transmitting information is flawed. See Edward Tufte's "The
Cognitive Style of PowerPoint" for a good analysis of the problems this brings
(<http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint> ).

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ubernostrum
I've not read the essay (and, with no obvious way to purchase any version
other than dead-tree, I likely will not), but the blurb concludes:

"What is the problem with PowerPoint? And how can we improve our
presentations?"

This seems to imply that the opposite assumption you seem to be making --
slides can never effectively transmit information -- is also flawed.

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Kliment
On the contrary. A part of the essay is available online, from the linked
page. Tufte is very clear that it is possible to have informative
presentations - but slideware does not help towards this goal. He argues that
slides have a terrible bandwidth, and do not help anyone but the worst 5% of
presenters, where they help by imposing structure - any structure at all - on
the presentation. All other presenters, he states, would be better off without
slides, and should rather just talk, or, better, give their audience their
ideas in written form, as sentences made of words rather than slides made of
points, and talk about them once they have been read and understood.

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ubernostrum
The essay you linked is titled "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching
Out Corrupts Within". The link from that page is to an excerpt of an essay
titled "PowerPoint Does Rocket Science: Assessing the Quality and Credibility
of Technical Reports". Given that they have different titles, I suspect they
are not the same essay, and the latter essay concludes not with PowerPoint
being unable to transmit information, but with a (sensible) recommendation to
use technical reports when technical reports are called for.

~~~
Kliment
The excerpt is in fact from the essay (I'd know, it's right here in the dead
tree version)

