tower@bu-cs.UUCP (04/03/87)
I was unhappy with the quality of many of the second (2nd) day slides
at the Washington USENIX, The reason is:
They attempted to present large quantities of data related to
performance and failed.
We were shown raw numbers, poorly interpreted data, and poorly
presented data that confused rather than clarified the performance
results being presented.
I have seen this problem with many talks. Many presenters seem to not
understand the importance of preparing for a talk, and how to present
statistical data graphically.
I have two suggestions for future speakers:
1) Presenters read "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information"
by Edward R. Tufte, Graphics Press, Cheshire, CT., BEFORE they
prepare their slides for a talk. Prof. Tufte book is the best work
I have seen on how to clearly present large volumes of information
graphically.
2) Read a copy of Patrick Winston's notes on Lecturing Heuristics.
He is the Director of the MIT AI Laboratory, 545 Technology Square,
Cambridge, MA 02139.
Perhaps the USENIX Association could secure the right to redistribute
these notes to future USENIX speakers, well before each USENIX.
Remember that high-quality results, deserve high-quality presentation.
Thanx -len
--
Len Tower, Distributed Systems Group, Boston University,
111 Cummington Street, Boston, MA 02215, USA +1 (617) 353-2780
Home: 36 Porter Street, Somerville, MA 02143, USA +1 (617) 623-7739
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