Do you use graphs in your presentations?
Seth Godin recently expressed some opinions I agree with (it’s not the first time…).
One point that stands out from his article is to use your graph to tell a story.
He says:
There are only four reasons I can imagine you would want to show someone a graph (not a chart, or an infogram or a diagram, but a graph of numbers):
- Things are going great, look!
- Things are a disaster, help!
- Nothing much is happening.
- We need to work together to figure out what the data means.
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My advice with all the content/structure of your presentation is to think about who you’re talking to and what you want them able and motivated to do as a result.
Seems like Seth and I agree…
Head to the full post for more, along with some very sound advice on graph design.
How do you deal with displaying data well?
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I agree with both you and Seth. Not a big surprise, since presenting data effectively is to speakers as Oxygen is to, well, speakers.
Anyone who has data to present would be well-served by reading Edward Tufte’s work, especially The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi). His essay on Powerpoint (http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_pp) is also worth a look. Some might argue that Tufte’s minimalist tendencies in presenting data are extreme, but I think he makes a good case for dragging the pendulum of gross graphics back toward a more sensible ground.
My biggest concern with presenting data, though, is that one tell the WHOLE story. It is tempting to make a point by truncating a bit of data, but it’s misleading. That to me is unconscionable. Things are rarely as simple as they first seem. Don’t mislead your audience into believing that they are. They deserve better.
Do you want to earn my respect as a presenter? Tell me the truth, and tell it plainly. I might disagree with you, but I’ll respect you.
Hi Todd
Yep – Edward Tufte is a god. I spent a couple of days just sitting in the library reading Visual Display… genius. I love that the book itself is self-exemplifying – a book that beautifully displays how to display data beautifully.
It’s a hard one about telling the whole story with your data.
I agree about telling the truth, and sometimes the full set of data is difficult for non-specialists to digest, especially with time/motivation constraints.
No easy answer to that one – thinking the data through in light of their interests is a start…
Call me a contrarian, but I don’t think the goal of a presentation — even a technical presentation — is to communicate data. I think the goal is, or should be, to put forth and explain ideas that make sense of the pertinent data and information so that people (paraphrasing Andrew) can and want to take action.
It’s the presenter’s job to collect, assess, and sift through the data and information in order to provide context and meaning. In the process, it’s necessary to make choices about what to include and what to exclude.
Most of the time I want the data or information on any one slide to make one and only point. (If the data makes two or three points, create two or three slides.)
It’s possible to present complex ideas in a presentation, juxtaposing seemingly contradictory points, in order to tell the truth. But PowerPoint has a limited ability — a very limited ability — to project complexity and detail. (Consider how useless Excel spread sheets become when they’re imported into PowerPoint. They almost always prompt the presenter to say my least favorite phrase, “You probably can’t read this, but…”) And people have an equally limited ability to remember data and information.