How to give a research talk Thomas D. Nielsen September 2008 How - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

How to give a research talk Thomas D. Nielsen September 2008 How to give a research talk September 2008 1 / 23

The purpose of your talk ... ... is not to impress the audience with your brainpower tell them all you know about the topic present all the technical details Introduction How to give a research talk September 2008 2 / 23

The purpose of your talk ... ... is to give the audience a taster for your work present the key ideas, intuitions, and results make the audience interested Introduction How to give a research talk September 2008 3 / 23

Preparing and structuring the presentation Preparing and structuring the talk How to give a research talk September 2008 4 / 23

Preparing the presentation Deciding on what to say and what to omit Who is the primary audience? If only one thing should be remembered from the talk, what should it be (be specific, what is the key idea)? Preparing and structuring the talk How to give a research talk September 2008 5 / 23

Preparing the presentation Deciding on what to say and what to omit Who is the primary audience? If only one thing should be remembered from the talk, what should it be (be specific, what is the key idea)? In general Convey the essential part of your paper, but don’t overwhelm the audience with too much material. It is better to leave out certain details than to give a superficial treatment of everything or to overrun your time. Adopt a nonuniform approach when preparing the presentation. That does not mean holding back important details - merely omitting less important ones! Preparing and structuring the talk How to give a research talk September 2008 5 / 23

Structuring the presentation Guiding the audience People often use a contents slide: Introduction Contents Introduction Bayesian networks Graph concepts Domain graphs Triangulated graphs Join graphs Join trees Junction trees Message passing Thomas D. Nielsen How to give a research talk Reconsider! Instead it can be useful to show an outline slide at the start of a section, to help the audience stay on track (or help those who got distracted or lost to rejoin you). Preparing and structuring the talk How to give a research talk September 2008 6 / 23

Structuring the presentation Introduction Remember: If you bore the audience the first few minutes, you may never get them back ⇒ jump right in! Give an example to motivate the problem you are working with! Avoid launching into technical details that will confuse the audience. Preparing and structuring the talk How to give a research talk September 2008 7 / 23

Structuring the presentation Introduction Remember: If you bore the audience the first few minutes, you may never get them back ⇒ jump right in! Give an example to motivate the problem you are working with! Avoid launching into technical details that will confuse the audience. Conclusion For conferences, end your presentation with a contributions/conclusions slides to help the audience remember what to take home from the presentation. What should be the last thing the audience sees? Don’t be afraid to include open problems. Preparing and structuring the talk How to give a research talk September 2008 7 / 23

Structuring the presentation Introduction Remember: If you bore the audience the first few minutes, you may never get them back ⇒ jump right in! Give an example to motivate the problem you are working with! Avoid launching into technical details that will confuse the audience. The body . . . What to put in . . . Conclusion For conferences, end your presentation with a contributions/conclusions slides to help the audience remember what to take home from the presentation. What should be the last thing the audience sees? Don’t be afraid to include open problems. Preparing and structuring the talk How to give a research talk September 2008 7 / 23

What to put in? ? What to include? How to give a research talk September 2008 8 / 23

What (not) to put in? It is usually difficult to follow highly abstract presentations! Definition X : mixed n -dimensional random vector. Y = ( Y 1 , . . . , Y d ) , Z = ( Z 1 , . . . , Z c ) its discrete and 1 continuous parts. A function f : Ω X �→ R + 0 is a Mixture of Truncated Exponentials potential (MTE potential) if for each fixed value y ∈ Ω Y of the discrete variables Y , the potential over the continuous variables Z is defined as: m 8 c 9 b ( j ) < = f ( z ) = a 0 + a i exp i z j X X i = 1 j = 1 : ; for all z ∈ Ω Z , where a i , b ( j ) are real numbers. i f is an MTE potential if there is a partition D 1 , . . . , D k of Ω Z into hypercubes and in each D i , f 2 is defined as above. Ask yourself Have I illustrated this concept/definition/theorem . . . with an example? What to include? How to give a research talk September 2008 9 / 23

What (not) to put in? Examples Use examples to motivate and help the audience Convey basic intuition Illustrate main idea Show extreme cases . . . What to include? How to give a research talk September 2008 10 / 23

What (not) to put in? Examples Use examples to motivate and help the audience Convey basic intuition Illustrate main idea Show extreme cases . . . Triangulation Triangulation by elimination 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Eliminating a node: Make all its noneliminated neighbors complete and remove the node. What to include? How to give a research talk September 2008 10 / 23

What (not) to put in? Examples Use examples to motivate and help the audience Convey basic intuition Illustrate main idea Show extreme cases . . . Triangulation Triangulation by elimination 1 2 1 2 3 4 3 4 5 6 7 5 6 7 8 8 Eliminating a node: Make all its noneliminated neighbors complete and remove the node. What to include? How to give a research talk September 2008 10 / 23

What (not) to put in? Examples Use examples to motivate and help the audience Convey basic intuition Illustrate main idea Show extreme cases . . . Triangulation Triangulation by elimination 1 2 1 2 3 4 3 4 5 6 7 5 6 7 8 8 Eliminating a node: Make all its noneliminated neighbors complete and remove the node. What to include? How to give a research talk September 2008 10 / 23

What (not) to put in? Examples Use examples to motivate and help the audience Convey basic intuition Illustrate main idea Show extreme cases . . . Triangulation Triangulation by elimination 1 2 1 2 3 4 3 4 5 6 7 5 6 7 8 8 Eliminating a node: Make all its noneliminated neighbors complete and remove the node. What to include? How to give a research talk September 2008 10 / 23

What (not) to put in? Examples Use examples to motivate and help the audience Convey basic intuition Illustrate main idea Show extreme cases . . . Triangulation Triangulation by elimination 1 2 1 2 3 4 3 4 5 6 7 5 6 7 8 8 Eliminating a node: Make all its noneliminated neighbors complete and remove the node. What to include? How to give a research talk September 2008 10 / 23

What (not) to put in? Examples Use examples to motivate and help the audience Convey basic intuition Illustrate main idea Show extreme cases . . . Triangulation Triangulation by elimination 1 2 1 2 3 4 3 4 5 6 7 5 6 7 8 8 Eliminating a node: Make all its noneliminated neighbors complete and remove the node. What to include? How to give a research talk September 2008 10 / 23

What (not) to put in? Examples Use examples to motivate and help the audience Convey basic intuition Illustrate main idea Show extreme cases . . . Triangulation Triangulation by elimination 1 2 1 2 3 4 3 4 5 6 7 5 6 7 8 8 Eliminating a node: Make all its noneliminated neighbors complete and remove the node. What to include? How to give a research talk September 2008 10 / 23

What (not) to put in? Examples Use examples to motivate and help the audience Convey basic intuition Illustrate main idea Show extreme cases . . . Triangulation Triangulation by elimination 1 2 1 2 3 4 3 4 5 6 7 5 6 7 8 8 Eliminating a node: Make all its noneliminated neighbors complete and remove the node. What to include? How to give a research talk September 2008 10 / 23

What (not) to put in? Examples Use examples to motivate and help the audience Convey basic intuition Illustrate main idea Show extreme cases . . . Triangulation Triangulation by elimination 1 2 1 2 3 4 3 4 5 6 7 5 6 7 8 8 Eliminating a node: Make all its noneliminated neighbors complete and remove the node. What to include? How to give a research talk September 2008 10 / 23

What (not) to put in? People can only read or take in very limited information: six or seven things on a slide is quite enough. Slides shouldn’t repeat what you plan to say, but rather emphasize it. Plan to talk about what’s on the slides rather than read them. What to include? How to give a research talk September 2008 11 / 23