New School Economic Review

Let there be stoning… for bad presenters

by Benjamin on July 4, 2009

Isn’t it nice when you’ve been asking for better presentations in conferences and lectures and then suddenly you realise that you are wholly unoriginal and people have been thinking the same thing for 20+ years?

Yes we have PresentationZen and Edward Tufte today, not to mention Hans Rosling and TED, but having just attended two international conferences these last two weeks, there is still a long way to go before we can catch up with Jay H. Lehr’s article “Let there be stoning!” – what an excellent 4 page read.

Lehr, Jay H. 1985. “Let there be Stoning!” Ground Water 23(2): 163-5

Can you see the music?

by Benjamin on February 9, 2009

For those of you who have not yet heard of Hans Rosling, let me introduce a man who single-handedly makes data and statistics exciting, interesting and easy to play with (yes I said play) via the gapminder project. Dr. Rosling in a talk at the OECD a few years back opened by showing the audience something beautiful. He showed Chopin… In fact he put a copy of the notes on the screen, looked at it’s beauty and said:

Few people will appreciate the music if I just show them the notes. Most of us need to listen to the music to understand how beautiful it is. But often that’s how we present statistics; we just show the notes we don’t play the music.

And Hans Rosling Played the music and presented statistics on growth, development, health and everything else in a way which is just fanstastic! Take some time, it’s well worth watching:

“Debunking third world myths, and the best stats you’ve ever seen!”
Fantastic… If you are not excited by stats after this… there’s no hope

 

“New Insights on Poverty and Life around the World”
Stats, graphics, imagery, poverty… Oh yeah, and getting ’serious’ with PowerPoint…

 

“Unveil the Beauty of Statistics”
Quality not as good as the TED talks, but message is right on the spot