No! Edward Tufte would never! : bioephemera

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Jessica Palmer has a PhD in Molecular Biology and has been blogging about the intersection of art and biology since 2006.

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No! Edward Tufte would never!

Category: Blogosphere • Dataviz • Design • Ephemera • Frivolity • Web 2.0, New Media, and Gadgets
Posted on: March 17, 2010 2:21 PM, by Jessica Palmer

Mark Goetz makes me LOL:

Via lots of places, most recently Pollster.

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That is an absolute classic and one I shall be sharing with my data vis team this morning!

Posted by: Grendel | March 17, 2010 7:25 PM

I'm proud to say that I just gave my upteenth powerpointless talk on Newton as cop at Fermilab -- got some raised eyebrows but post-talk props; no kittens killed and the rhythm of story and argument allowed to unfold without the sudden halts and lurches evoked by slides that are more makeable than potent.

Posted by: Tom Levenson | March 17, 2010 9:54 PM

I'll readily admit slides can be effective - Larry Lessig certainly uses them well. And in some fields (developmental biology, etc.) it's really hard to teach without any slides (you need to show complex figures that would take too long to draw out). But i'm a huge fan of the chalk talk - and if it saves kittens too, well then, no contest. :)

Posted by: Jessica Palmer | March 17, 2010 10:09 PM

powerpointless

The first time through I parsed this Power{Pointless}, rather than the intended (and less snarky) {PowerPoint}less. The former is a too apt description of many presentations that would have been better off as the latter.

Of course it's possible to give a good presentation with PowerPoint. The problem with PowerPoint is that it's so easy to give a bad presentation. To paraphrase Dostoyevsky: Good PowerPoints are all alike; every bad PowerPoint is bad in its own way.

Posted by: Eric Lund | March 18, 2010 10:14 AM

I do quite a bit of lecturing (I'm not a teacher), and for years I refused to use the computer in my lectures because the equipment never worked reliably. However, I had an epiphany after watching Scott McCloud's talk at TED, and now I use Keynote (Mac for "PowerPoint") heavily in my presentations. But I adhere to an iron rule:

All language comes out of my mouth. Keynote solely for images.

Posted by: Erasmussimo | March 18, 2010 11:04 AM

After I read Tufte, my Powerpoint presentations became awesome. If I do say so myself. It takes work, though.

Posted by: michael5000 | March 18, 2010 7:05 PM

Does Tufte spank his monkey every time someone gives a talk without Powerpoint?

Posted by: Comrade PhysioProf | March 19, 2010 8:08 PM

Tufte WOULD TOO kill kittens, if it clearly, concisely, and with a minimum of 'window dressing', conveyed the point he was intending to make.

Oh, and if he could sell posters of it from his store, that might help too! :-)

Posted by: Colin Burgess | March 21, 2010 5:57 PM

Eric Lund, that's Tolstoy, not Dostoevsky (Anna Karenina).

Posted by: jnorvell | April 2, 2010 9:20 PM

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No! Edward Tufte would never!

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