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As data scientists or analysts, we spend countless hours perfecting our ability to analyze data, build machine learning models, and keep up with the latest technology trends. One skill, however, that everyone needs is the ability to create a compelling presentation.
Every Data Scientist, Analyst, and Data Engineer needs to get good at building a compelling presentation.
Here are tips and tricks I've gathered over 20 years of presenting to executives, customers, and peers. None of these tips are limited to Data Science and can be used by anyone creating a presentation; let's take a quick look at them.
Storytelling with situation, complication, resolution, the one minute per slide rule, the rule of three, write slide titles as outcomes, reading titles outloud, focus your audience's attention, creating compelling data visualizations.
Let's get started!
When starting a presentation, they often open PowerPoint, Keynote, or their tool of choice and start trying to build the deck immediately. This issue, of course, is that you're going to iterate 100 times on the slides and probably end up deleting most of what you've created.
A better way to approach this is to start with an outline , No different than you were taught in English 101. But don't think of this as an outline of the slides you want to create. Think of the outline as the story you're going to tell . There are two common ways to create an outline. The first is simply using ordered lists and structuring your outline by ideas or sections of your story (I'll cover the storytelling part next). If you're a more visual person, you can use a mind map and structure it similarly.
Once you have your outline set, creating the supporting content is a breeze.
A classic storytelling framework is the Hero's Journey . The general idea is that a hero goes on a journey and introduces some obstacles; finally, the hero can overcome that obstacle, and everyone lives happily ever after.
In our business presentations, we can use a similar framework called Situation-Complication-Resolution or SCR . I was first introduced to SCR through the book The Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto, who popularized this method while working at McKinsey Consulting. The structure of this is perfect for creating a business story. It's a simple framework that keeps you organized in your structure, brings action-oriented results, and fits into the Rule-of-Three, which I'll cover later.
Using our outline format, here is an overly simplified example of SCR. In practice, you would introduce more details as sub-items of the nodes. Utilizing SCR will help you create a clean, compelling story!
This one is simple and effective. Instead of creating your presentation and rehearsing the timing, consider that each major content slide will take one minute to present . If you have a 20-minute presentation, aim for 20 slides with content. You should not include section dividers, the cover, or a closing logo slide in your count. I've found over the years that, generally speaking, some will take longer, some will be shorter, but on average, they'll take about a minute.
Eliminate the stress from figuring out how much content you need to create.
Another guiding principle is the Rule of Three . The rule of three is simple: stick with three and only three items when building your structure, sections of your story, or the number of bullet points on your slide.
Apple has implemented this all over their presentation and product lines, and science has shown that our brain loves patterns and three is the minimum number needed to form a pattern .
Structuring your slides utilizing the rule of three will help your audience remember your content and simplify building the presentation. You might be tempted to think, "more information is better with four, six, or eight bullet points. No one will be able to follow all that, so cut it down to the three most impactful messages.
Another trick if you have slightly more information is to structure it three-by-three like the image below.
I often see the mistake of Data Scientists writing their slide titles describing what is on the slide vs. what the outcome or takeaway of the slide is. This simple practice you can get into will dramatically improve your presentation with little effort. Let's take a look at a couple of examples.
Subject-Based | Outcome-Based |
---|---|
Algorithm Training and Validation | Predict Customer Churn with 92% Accuracy |
Q1 Conversation Rates | Accounts With Direct Contact are 5x More Likely to Purchase |
Utilizing XGBoost to Classify Accounts | Machine Learning Improves Close Rates by 22% |
It is pretty clear with examples like this which is more compelling to your audience. Remember, your slide titles are the outcome of your slide!
There are plenty of articles that will tell you not to read your slides out loud. Reading your content directly from your slides is a sure-fire way to bore your audience and lose their attention.
However, I have one caveat to that rule; read your slide titles out loud .
According to Naegle :
Reading and verbal processing use the same cognitive channels—therefore, an audience member can either read the slide, listen to you, or do some part of both (each poorly) due to cognitive overload.
By reading just the tile and title only as you start each slide, the audience will be able to process the message much more easily than reading the written words and listening to you simultaneously. While this might feel uncomfortable initially, practice it with some colleagues and see for yourself!
For the rest of the slide, do not read the content, especially if you use a lot of bulleted or ordered lists. Reading all of your content can be monotonous, as mentioned above.
When you have more than just a single word or number on your slide (which can also be a really powerful practice), you can leverage techniques or attributes to focus your audience's attention on the most important words. These attention getters are known as preattentive attributes .
When your eyes and brain first see a slide, for the first fraction of a second, you are drawn to different elements that stand out. Items can be in bold , italics , or a different color or size . The fact that they are different from the main text is how you can focus your attention.
A great example of this is adapted from Stephen Few's Tapping into the Power of Visual Perception . When we look at the first block of text, it all tends to blend. If we were to ask you, "tell me how many number sevens there are," it would take a little time.
However, when you look at the second image where we've tapped into preattentive attributes of bold and color , we can see each seven.
This concept also directly applies to building data visualizations, which we'll cover next.
This section alone could warrant an entire article (or book) written about it. The good news is that the are great ones that already exist. I recommend two that you should get right now:
Both of these books cover how to build a better visualization. Read these, study them, and refer to them each time you build a visual and a presentation.
Learning how to present your Data Science project results compellingly is one of the most critical skills you can learn. We covered how to start with an outline, utilizing storytelling frameworks to structure your presentation, the one-minute rule, and the rule of three. We also discussed how to form better titles by writing them as outcomes instead of subjects. We talked about two ways to focus your audience's attention: reading your titles aloud when presenting and tapping into preattentive attributes through methods like bold and color. Finally, we covered creating a compelling visualization of your data. Follow these as guidelines for your next presentation, and I'm confident you will be able to create a compelling presentation.
Apr 9, 2019 | Articles , DataPoint , DataPoint Automation , DataPoint Real-time Screens
Here is a recording of Garland’s presentation “10 Creative Ways to Use Data In Presentations” from our 2018 Presentation Ideas Conference. If you have comments or questions about the presentation, let us know.
Data is increasingly important in business and organizations.
In this presentation, Garland will show you 10 creative and original ways organizations are using data in their presentations including infographics, automatic dashboards, customizable presentations, real-time engagement and even communicating with our new robot overlords!
Garland is a professional speaker, coach, and consultant on digital marketing and productivity.
Garland has taught workshops for business conferences, universities, government agencies, non-profits and small to medium size businesses. Thousands of people have attended Garland’s presentations and rave about he helps transform their lives and businesses.
Garland is the host for this conference and is the Marketing Director for PresentationPoint.
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IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
A computer uses a fixed number of bits to represent a piece of data which could be a number, a character, image, sound, video, etc. Data representation is the method used internally to represent data in a computer. Let us see how various types of data can be represented in computer memory. Before discussing data representation of numbers, let ...
Understanding Data Presentations (Guide + Examples) Design • March 20th, 2024. In this age of overwhelming information, the skill to effectively convey data has become extremely valuable. Initiating a discussion on data presentation types involves thoughtful consideration of the nature of your data and the message you aim to convey.
When we look at a computer, we see text and images and shapes. To a computer, all of that is just binary data, 1s and 0s. The following 1s and 0s represents a tiny GIF: This next string of 1s and 0s represents a command to add a number: You might be scratching your head at this point. Why do computers represent information in such a hard to ...
Methods of Data Presentation in Statistics. 1. Pictorial Presentation. It is the simplest form of data Presentation often used in schools or universities to provide a clearer picture to students, who are better able to capture the concepts effectively through a pictorial Presentation of simple data. 2.
We also cover the basics of digital circuits and logic gates, and explain how they are used to represent and process data in computer systems. Our guide includes real-world examples and case studies to help you master data representation principles and prepare for your computer science exams. Check out the links below:
Mantissa, Significand and fraction are synonymously used terms. In the computer, the representation is binary and the binary point is not fixed. For example, a number, say, 23.345 can be written as 2.3345 x 101 or 0.23345 x 102 or 2334.5 x 10-2. The representation 2.3345 x 101 is said to be in normalised form.
The operating system and hardware ensure that data in this segment is not changed during the lifetime of the program. Any attempt to modify data in the code segment will cause a crash. i1, the int global object, has the next highest address. It is in the data segment, which holds modifiable global data. This segment keeps the same size as the ...
Data representation. Computers use binary - the digits 0 and 1 - to store data. A binary digit, or bit, is the smallest unit of data in computing. It is represented by a 0 or a 1. Binary numbers are made up of binary digits (bits), eg the binary number 1001. The circuits in a computer's processor are made up of billions of transistors.
Clarity: Data presentations make complex information clear and concise. Engagement: Visuals, such as charts and graphs, grab your audience's attention. Comprehension: Visual data is easier to understand than long, numerical reports. Decision-making: Well-presented data aids informed decision-making.
The term 'data presentation' relates to the way you present data in a way that makes even the most clueless person in the room understand. ... For elections, many news outlets assign a specific colour code to a state, with blue representing one candidate and red representing the other. The shade of either blue or red in each state shows the ...
The definitive guide to presenting data in PowerPoint - MLC Presentation Design Consulting.
TheJoelTruth. While a good presentation has data, data alone doesn't guarantee a good presentation. It's all about how that data is presented. The quickest way to confuse your audience is by ...
We call this process coding. [1] Coding is the iterative process of assigning meaning to the data you have collected in order to both simplify and identify patterns. This chapter introduces you to the process of qualitative data analysis and the basic concept of coding, while the following chapter (chapter 19) will take you further into the ...
When your slide deck is shared with a person who knows, they should be able to tell it's your presentation. In short, it is important to find or create YOUR style. 3. Use Storytelling Techniques To Present Your Data. Narrating your data in a compelling and engaging way is the key to a successful presentation.
Every Data Scientist, Analyst, and Data Engineer needs to get good at building a compelling presentation. Here are tips and tricks I've gathered over 20 years of presenting to executives, customers, and peers. None of these tips are limited to Data Science and can be used by anyone creating a presentation; let's take a quick look at them.
This method of displaying data uses diagrams and images. It is the most visual type for presenting data and provides a quick glance at statistical data. There are four basic types of diagrams, including: Pictograms: This diagram uses images to represent data. For example, to show the number of books sold in the first release week, you may draw ...
Make sure your data is accurate, up-to-date, and relevant to your presentation topic. Your goal will be to create clear conclusions based on your data and highlight trends. 2. Know your audience. Knowing who your audience is and the one thing you want them to get from your data is vital.
Data can be anything like a number, a name, notes in a musical composition, or the color in a photograph. Data representation can be referred to as the form in which we stored the data, processed it and transmitted it. In order to store the data in digital format, we can use any device like computers, smartphones, and iPads.
Presentation length. This is my formula to determine how many slides to include in my main presentation assuming I spend about five minutes per slide. (Presentation length in minutes-10 minutes for questions ) / 5 minutes per slide. For an hour presentation that comes out to ( 60-10 ) / 5 = 10 slides.
A presentation that displays real-time data. OK, the split flap board is not a real presentation since it is hardware, but it has the same mechanism as a data presentation on a computer or television screen. Next to airports, you will find such monitors at train stations, factories, museums, reception desks, hospitals and so on.
i) Bit - The smallest binary unit, '0' or '1 ii) Byte - A group/collection of 8 bits used to represent a character. iii) Nibble - a group of four binary digits usually representing a numeric. value iv) word - The total number of bits that a single register of a particular. machine can hold. TYPES OF DATA PRESENTATION
Every Data Scientist, Analyst, and Data Engineer needs to get good at building a compelling presentation. Here are tips and tricks I've gathered over 20 years of presenting to executives, customers, and peers. None of these tips are limited to Data Science and can be used by anyone creating a presentation; let's take a quick look at them.
Presentations. Data is increasingly important in business and organizations. In this presentation, Garland will show you 10 creative and original ways organizations are using data in their presentations including infographics, automatic dashboards, customizable presentations, real-time engagement and even communicating with our new robot overlords!