Computer Science 590.01
Topics in Computational Structural Biology


Overview | Syllabus | Schedule | How to give a good talk
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How to Give a Good Talk

If you are scheduled to give a talk, I've prepared a set of hints for giving a good talk. Follow every atom of every letter of every word of advice in these rules.

Here is a list of ways to give a terrible talk, that you should read, and then avoid, evade, elude, shun, and eschew (avoid stresses forethought and caution in keeping clear of danger or difficulty; evade implies adroitness, ingenuity, or lack of scruple in escaping or avoiding; elude implies a slippery or baffling quality in the person or thing that escapes; shun often implies an avoiding as a matter of habitual practice or policy and may imply repugnance or abhorrence; eschew implies an avoiding or abstaining from as unwise or distasteful).

For your talk, make slides (either by hand, or electronically). Do not use the board during your talk. The reason for this is that all students can learn in the course of this class, to give a good talk using slides. To give a good talk using the board -- that is, to teach board technique, is much more difficult, and beyond a scope of this course. Do not go back and forth between your slides and the board during your talk. If there's something that you need to explain that you plan to use the board for -- don't! Instead, put this material on your slides!

The one exception is that if you get a question from the audience, you may use the board to answer it. However: what you should do is try to anticipate what questions you expect from audience ahead of time, and make extra slides to answer these, to have just in case.

In your talk, try to go into some technical detail. Your goal should be to show the class something technical -- and teach them something concrete and technical rather than the skim over everything. You want to go into some depth -- describe at least two algorithms in detail, show two theorems in detail, etc. Applications are good, but only if you've covered something technical -- an algorithm, a theorem etc. -- first.

Be prepared for your talk. If there are things that you don't understand you need to read more papers on the subject to fill in the holes. This class is not just about reading the assigned papers -- you need to read some background reading if there are things that you don't understand. Basically one strategy to do this is to search for related papers that answer the question, or back-chain from the references in the papers you are assigned. The mind-set to have is: pretend this is research. If there is something you don't understand, you cannot just say 'I don't know.' You have to do some research -- i.e. reading and thinking -- to figure it out, just as you would for your thesis!

Occasionally students want to include a figure from the PDF of the paper in their talk. This is okay -- so long as it is not overdone -- but if you do this be sure to use the "snapshot tool" in Adobe Acrobat. Before using the snapshot tool, increase the size of the image to the maximum possible -- this will make sure that the resolution is sufficient so the image is not blurry in your presentation.

Under no circumstances should you use the "Mac Grab" feature available on a Macintosh -- the resulting PowerPoint will not be machine independent and will only work on a Mac.

Here is an example of how to overdo this business of grabbing images from the paper to use in your talk. Never make these errors!