| Notes on giving effective presentations |
[Jun. 3rd, 2010|08:05 pm] |
At the MRS Spring meeting, I went to a session on how to give a scientific presentation by consultant Tim Miller, which I found quite valuable. Here's a summary of my notes from that session.
He gave six tips that he called a "first approximation" to the right way to give a talk. They were:
- Stand still
- Face the audience
- Make eye contact
- Speak slowly
- Practice beforehand
- Stick to the plan
I tend not to do these things, so it was a good reminder. One common mistake is laser pointer over-use, and from this list you can see why it occurs (you don't stand still, so you need something in your hands; you don't practice beforehand, so you need to emphasize things that you hadn't thought of) and why it's a problem (it stops you from standing still and facing the audience).
He seemed to have a theater background, so he pointed out the importance of breathing deeply, putting emphasis on certain words, and controlling your vocal inflection. It's been a long time since I thought of presenting in the context of theater, though many years ago I took a theater class partially because I thought it would make me a better presenter, so the reminder was so helpful to me.
In the realm of organizing a presentation, he likes a story-type structure, where you first establish a goal, describe each obstacle on the way, and then discuss how you overcame it. Again, typical of theater training. I recall a mnemonic GOTE for setting up a scene: Goals, Obstacles, Tactics, Emotion. The talk should start broad, narrow down, then end more broadly.
Considering your audience is, of course, important. He set it up as a question of balance between answering the questions "what" and "so what." The extremes of this continuum are your thesis advisor, who only needs to know what you're doing, and one he labeled "my mom." His mom doesn't care what you're doing, but she might be interested if your work can help solve global warming. He suggested giving talks for nonscientific audiences as often as possible, since it forces you to be a good presenter.
Unsurprisingly, much of the discussion was about slides. The key point here was to organize and implement the presentation based on the material and audience, not based on PowerPoint. The slide is not a fundamental unit of organization. A pictoral example that you talk over can be much more effective than a bulleted list. Figures should be made as big as possible, with fewer elements per slide. Black backgrounds are better for projecting than white. Signposts about where in the presentation you're in are helpful.
You should never read your slides. He gave an effective and humorous demonstration of this, where he put up a slide with a bunch of text explaining why you shouldn't read your slides, then got himself a drink of water.
As Mr. Miller was quick to point out, none of these suggestions are new or earth-shattering. Yet many people fail to follow the best practices when giving talks. It was nice to have them summarized and demonstrated so effectively. In particular, my talk the next day benefitted from the advice to breathe deeply, stand still, and not overuse the laser pointer. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[May. 29th, 2010|12:25 pm] |
A few weeks back, I promised some notes about a presentation on integrating renewable power into the grid. Here is a summarized version of my notes. Hopefully you will find it interesting. Since it is just a summary of my notes, let me know if there's anything that doesn't make sense.
This was a presentation from someone on the analysis/economics side of things, and I learned a lot about how the grid is put together and what the issues are with integrating wind and solar. The basic message is that, in order to integrate significant (>30%) wind and solar, we need more flexibility in the grid and better energy storage.
The grid is an interconnected network of sources (such as power plants) and sinks(everything that uses electricity). The power being produced must always equal the power being consumed, and right now there's very limited capacity to store extra power. Utilities buy and sell power among themselves, though there's a need for this process to be better streamlined.
Some types of power plants (such as natural gas) can be turned on and off easily, while some types (coal and nuclear) are prohibitively expensive to turn off and on. Utilities will sell power at a loss, or even pay to get rid of it, rather than turn off a coal plant. I think this is why natural gas is sometimes referred to as a "bridge fuel," because it is more flexible. In addition, plants are more efficient when they operate at higher output, because that's what they're designed for, and it takes time for them to ramp up and down production significantly.
Integrating wind into the grid poses problems because the peak production doesn't coincide well with the peak use times: you make power when you don't need it, and you don't make when you do. One graph that illustrated the problem nicely for me showed the simulated load on the rest of the grid over the course of a day, with and without lots of wind power. The graph essentially looks like a sine wave, and with wind the wave has a higher amplitude. So this is where the need for flexibility comes in. The remaining resources on the grid need to be able to tolerate a larger and faster swing between periods of high and low demand. Solar production tends to coincide with peak electricity use.
Another solution to this problem (and probably we'll implement some of both) is better storage. Prior to the 1980s, it was thought that we'd have to integrate significant amounts of nuclear into the grid. Since nuclear can't turn up and down, storage was a concern. Some low-tech solutions from this era are still the most cost-effective. Two of these are pumping water uphill and compressing gas into underground caverns. Another somewhat low-tech solution, which I found particularly clever, is to make ice at night and use it to cool buildings by day. On the high-tech end of things are advanced batteries and distributed storage. The speaker wasn't a big fan of chemical fuels for storage, but said that he thought they could help balance out seasonal variation.
During the question-and-answer, someone asked him to comment about the fixed costs associated with renewables. Basically, renewable power has a high up-front fixed cost, but the operating cost is low. |
|
|
| Notes on "Mothers on the Fast Track" |
[Apr. 30th, 2010|03:14 am] |
This book takes a look at the state of women, particularly women with children, in "fast track" careers: academics, medicine, journalism, law, corporate management, and politics. Mary Ann Mason has been studying these issues for many years, and has helped make the UC system much more family-friendly. She gave a talk during a "women's breakfast" at the last conference I went to, and I was interested to know more, so I picked up her most recent book.
"Mothers on the Fast Track: How a New Generation Can Balance Family and Career" (which Ms Mason co-wrote with her daughter, Eve Mason Ekman) is a quick read: 124 pages, plus 12 of references. The title makes it sound like a self-help book, but it's not. The focus is more institutional than personal. I highly recommend it for men and women.
Basically, the thesis of the book is that highly-trained women in these "fast-track" professions who have children tend to end up in "second-tier" positions (for instance, in academics, the non-tenure-track instructor). While these can be satisfying and a good way to achieve balance, the argument is that people in these positions need better job security and benefits, plus ways to get back on the fast track if they choose. It's not that tenure-track women aren't getting tenured; it's that they aren't taking tenure-track jobs to begin with.
Ms Mason also talks a lot (in this work and elsewhere) about the "make or break" years, between the ages of 30 and 40, where the age where you want to start a family collides with getting your career off the ground. She's working to make them less "make or break" career-wise. Encouragingly, she says that women who manage to get through these years tend to succeed and be satisfied with their lives.
She worries that if women don't start making it to the top tiers of their professions, we'll suffer a backlash for women in graduate education: It will again be seen to be wasted on women. She talks about why institutions should want to keep women on the fast track. I also found this discussion to be encouraging. Lots of people and institutions have put time and money into my training (thanks, US taxpayers!), and I have something real to contribute. Institutions shouldn't be flexible to my needs out of the goodness of their institutional hearts; they should do it because I'm a valuable human resource.
I said this wasn't a self-help book, but it does contain a bit of discussion on personal reasons why some women succeed on the fast track. A supportive partner seems to be key (and, boy, do I have one!), as is finding good mentors (ditto!) and perseverance/willingness to fight your way back onto the on-ramp. (Senator Dianne Feinstein is quoted in the book: "You have to be like a phoenix.")
One of the two big reasons I left research after undergraduate was that I falsely believed that having a family and a research career wasn't possible. (I also falsely believed that I couldn't contribute to society through doing physics.) In the end, my detour into teaching was valuable in many, many ways, not least of which being that it showed me that there are on-ramps. I'm still glad I didn't go straight to graduate school, but I do wish I had understood better what my options were. |
|
|
| I know what I have to do... |
[Jan. 10th, 2010|07:32 am] |
It's a little late for a new year resolution post, but I realized I'd better write this down somewhere semi-public. I don't have a big exciting resolution this year, but I want to make sure I do all the boring little things that (I've learned from experience) make my life run more smoothly.
Continue:
* Unloading the dishwasher in the morning
* Going to swim class on Wednesday and Friday
* Working an average of 10 hr/day Monday through Friday
* Going on our Friday date
Re-start:
* Putting my dirty clothes in the hamper
* Setting out my next day's outfit at night
* Going to the gym on Mondays
* Limiting myself to three desserts per week
* Drinking plenty of water
* Eating until I'm no longer hungry instead of stuffed full
* Taking one weekend day completely off from work
* Having dinner or lunch with friends once a week |
|
|
| Interview meme |
[Dec. 16th, 2009|08:30 pm] |
Trevor asked me some very interesting questions, which I answered below. If you'd like me to interview you, leave a comment to that effect and I'll ask you some questions.
1. What's the most striking difference in Boulder today compared to when you were in high school?
The development out on North Broadway makes me do a little mental double-take every time I see it. Possibly this has something to do with the fact that I rarely go to that part of town. In general Boulder has gotten more upscale and less funky, but I don't think I experience this (or other differences between then and now) as "striking," in the same way, I suppose, that you don't notice kids growing when you see them a lot.
2. Share a non-scholastic facet of graduate school that seems interesting, unusual, or frustrating.
Amber once said that she tells people that graduate school (in science) is like being an apprentice scientist. I think this is a good description. I try to be patient, but sometimes it's frustrating when people don't get that doing research is my job, and I don't get summer and winter break off. Officially I get campus-closed holidays off, but I'm not entitled to vacation days at all. (Unofficially, my advisor allows 2-3 weeks of vacation per year, so it works out to be pretty similar to most people's vacation.)
3. How does having a large garden (for a back yard) affect your life?
It affects things a lot. What we eat in the summer and fall is determined to a large extent by what is in season. Then in the winter and early spring we cook things that we've missed while we've been busy trying to eat the vegetables before they go bad. At certain times of the year, gardening becomes our main hobby, then in the winter we do other things. So our hobbies are pretty seasonal, too. On an emotional level, it feels good and useful to be able to do something so concrete as growing healthy and delicious food, and connects me to the earth more than anything else I do. I love being able to walk around out there and eat whatever I find.
4. If you could pick one scientific concept and have it clearly explained to everyone in America, what would you choose? Would you pick something different if the audience was limited to all America's politicians?
This is a really tough question. I probably wouldn't pick a different topic if the audience was all politicians, since I think that the same things that make people good citizens also make them good politicians. I don't think there's any particular scientific fact that I would want to convey, but rather I would want to choose something that shows how scientists think, and at the same time would inspire a sense of wonder at the natural world. My goal would be to get them to think and ask questions after I was done talking. To me, the story of the periodic table is one of the most amazing in all of science, so maybe I'd choose that, even though it's pretty abstract. Or maybe I'd just make them all watch Cosmos.
Come to think of it, one of my heroes, Al Bartlett, did choose something he wanted everyone to know, and he's been talking about it to anyone who will listen for the last several decades. He chose exponential growth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY
5. What's something you love to do, but rarely get around to?
Camping. I haven't slept outside for more than a year, which makes me sad. |
|
|
| Review: listening to Radiolab with a migrane |
[Nov. 30th, 2009|09:32 pm] |
Good: Engaging enough to take your mind off feeling bad without being able to see, no need to look at nausea-inducing bright screen.
Bad: Frequent use of screechy noises.
Brought to you by the portion of Sunday spent in my darkened bedroom whining, "I don't wanna throw up" and "Why do you use those sounds, Abumrad?"
(I get migranes seldom enough that I'm a big baby about them, but have had them enough that I pretty much know how one will run its course once it starts.) |
|
|
| Learning to work productively |
[Sep. 19th, 2009|08:24 am] |
I'm trying to learn how to work at a high but sustainable rate. My current goal is to do focused work for 10 hours a day during the week. This is far more productive than being at work all day, but spending a lot of it procrastinating. And it helps focus both my work and non-work time onto what's important. For instance, by taking a long lunch with my friends, I'll get home a bit later, so I can decide if it's worth it.
I'm giving myself grades for how well I do at this goal. This may seem harsh, but it's actually just the opposite: I have to give myself an A if I meet the standard I set, whether or not I "could have done more." So it helps me see that most days I do pretty well.
I started this system a few weeks ago, and it seems to be working pretty well. Things are moving along well in the lab, and I have also done things and seen people outside of work. This week was the first week I had all "A" and "B" days, and I moved my experiment forward significantly.
However, I'm really tired. Partly this is because of increasing my workouts, so I'm physically tired. But I think I need to remember to spend at least some of my non-work time resting, instead of running from activity to activity. Also I need to keep my brain from using energy on extraneous things, mostly by writing in personal and public journals (right now I have a lot of unprocessed thoughts that keep circling in my brain), and trusting that my to-do list system will keep me from forgetting anything important. |
|
|
| Swimming goals |
[Sep. 19th, 2009|07:56 am] |
Now that I've been to a few master swim classes, I have some goals for the semester:
* Have a backstroke I can trust (as in, I'm not constantly terrified I'm going to crash into someone, so I can relax and actually do the stroke, and I then do it basically right).
* Be able to do some semblance of a breast stroke, in particular getting the kick right.
* Consistently finish workouts and not be exhausted for the rest of the day.
* Do flip turns correctly most of the time.
I had some plan that I'd keep track of the workouts I was doing, but that turned out to take up too much brain space, so I'm not for now. |
|
|
| Masters swim class |
[Aug. 29th, 2009|07:16 am] |
Since this was the first week of classes, all rec center classes were free, so that people can try them out. I went to masters swim on Wednesday and Friday mornings, and I definitely will be signing up for it for the rest of the semester. My current exercise plan is to do a bike ride on Monday, swim Wednesday and Friday, and do some fun athletic activity on the weekend.
The first two lanes at the class were slower people, who did a shorter workout. I was the slowest of the people who did a longer workout, but I still finished in time. I wasn't sure I'd be able to, since it was the longest swim workout I've ever done (roughly 2 miles total). I wasn't nearly as sore as I thought I'd be afterward, though I definitely could have used a nap later. I brought a bottle of homemade sports drink (water, honey, lemon juice, salt), which I was very glad I had during the workout.
Here's what we did on Wednesday (units of yards):
Warmup: 200 freestyle, 200 kick, 200 pull (arms only)
3x300 easy, medium, then hard
400 kick, 400 pull
500 for time (mine was 9:52)
3x100 trading off fast length/slow length
2x100 races
2x50 races
Cooldown: 100 easy
And on Friday:
Warmup: 20x25
20x50 on 1:00, each 5 going harder- though they all took me about 50s.
20x100, 5 kick, 5 pull, 5 IM*, 5 hard/easy
10x25 drill
*I never learned how to do breaststroke properly, and I was afraid to try my butterfly with so many people around, so I just did freestyle and backstroke.
By the way, I'll probably keep logging my swim workouts through the semester, so I can see my progress, but I'll filter them, because they're not of general interest. If you want to see them, let me know and I'll put you on that filter. |
|
|
| A confession |
[Aug. 14th, 2009|06:52 am] |
When I'm working by myself and I get stuck, the best way to get unstuck is to pretend I'm in some Star Trek scenario. Like, I'm trapped on an enemy moon and everyone else is obliviously partying on the Enterprise, and I have to characterize the sample before the virus kills us all. Then I can usually figure out what to try next. |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
477150n's journal