The Hall of Shame
James S. Plank CS494 / CS594
Part of this class is about giving technical presentations, and an important part of giving a technical presentation is the preparation of your slides. You need to make your slides readable, uncluttered, and easy to parse.
There is a tendency to be lazy: To simply cut and paste a graphic from your technical paper, or to shove your data into Excel and then paste the ensuing graph into powerpoint. You need to resist this temptation.
These slides are gleaned from a few sources: Mostly, they are student presentation slides from earlier semesters, but some are from other sources. They illustrate what you are not to do. You don’t want your slide here.
Source: CS494 talk in 2015.
Problems:
– Font sizes in the graph too small.
– X axis labels are hard to read – 100,000,
200,000, … would be easier.
– X axis labels are nonsensical: 5.01E+06?
Source: CS494 talk in 2015.
Problems:
– Font sizes in the graph too small, again.
– X axis labels can use commas or something
to make sense of all of the zeroes.. – Why a legend with only one curve?
Problems:
– What are those values on the Y axis?
– Your axes need units. This is not economics!
Source: CS494 talk in 2015.
Problems:
– Why use a log axis to show a linear curve?
– Grid lines look really cluttered and junky.
– Don’t plot values if the specifics don’t matter.
Let the graph curve speak for itself.
– Why not seconds instead of milliseconds?
Source: CS494 talk in 2015.
Source: CS494 talk in 2015.
Problems:
– OMG – what is the X axis?
Not Linear
Not Logarithmic ??????
Source: CS494 talk in 2015.
Problems:
– OMG – what are those values on the X axis? – Why a legend for only one curve?
Source: Reddit post after the 2017 eclipse (https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/6v8a9m/oc_my_eyes_hurt/)
Problems:
– Y axis labels too small and don’t have units. – If you are plotting percentages, and the
values can’t go over 100%, don’t have 120
on the graph.
– Lazy x axis labels (9:00, 10:00, etc)
Problems:
– Fonts too small, again.
– Unnatural y axis labels, again. – Why write out “green line” and
“blue line”. Just use a legend. – Center the axis units.
Source: CS494 Presentation, 2015
Source: CS494 Presentation, 2015
Problem:
– Too cluttered
– No one wants to
read algorithms
Source: CS494 Presentation, 2015
Problems:
– All of those fonts are way too small. Again. – What is on the x axis:
50,000, 100,000, 500,000, 5,000,000? – Why so much wasted area?
– A clear screen-shot disaster.
– No x axis values or units.
– Y axis units/label colliding with the text.
– Too many words in the first bullet.
– I wrote jgraph; While I’m happy that you’re
using it, please don’t incorporate it into a disaster…
Source: CS494 Presentation, 2015
Source: CS494 Presentation, 2015
– Fonts too small. Again.
– OMG, look at that x axis – the labels run into each
other, and it’s not linear or logarithmic…
– Values are unnecessary, and clutter up the graph. – Ditto the lines in the graph.
Source: CS494 Presentation, 2015
– Fonts too small. Again.
– Why is -0.1 on an axis of running times? – Use 0 on the y axis.
– “2*O(n)” and “O(n-1)” do not make your
CS302 professor happy.
Source: Presentation at “Neuro Inspired Computing Elements, 2017”
– TOO MUCH STUFF ON THE SLIDE. – Unreadable pictures.