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[LitusSaxonicum]

John,

I don't remember a paper exactly as you describe it, and I guess nobody else does through the lack of replies. However, you might just mean the paper mentioned by Kenneth_Smith on getting the ideal scales, which appeared many pages ago and was:

https://people.sc.fsu.edu/~jburkardt/f77_src/toms463/toms463.html

Eddie

[LitusSaxonicum]

Sorry John, the lack of replies prompted me.

I have a couple of Edward Tufte's books (https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/) that are both beautiful and useful. You may find what you are looking for on his website.

Eddie

[DanRRight]

Hope you will tell us the essence of what was in his lessons. I looked briefly at his figures and found nothing that catched my eye or was worth of being useful

[DanRRight]

I looked at this site and even at Google search and my eye was not pleased by a single thing. What do you want to learn from him? Does he have any short video teasers somewhere ? There are so many lecturers here promiss to cure, teach and enrich you for a flat or subscription fee

[LitusSaxonicum]

Dan,

To mention just a few things, there is a criticism of Powerpoint 'style'. (You can find it online if you search for tufte-powerpoint.pdf where it was posted by a University staff member who is no respecter of copyright). He also criticises 'chart junk' or shading patterns that early (monochrome) graphics packages used. He talks about different types of charts, and how some conceal the truth rather than disclosing it.

Tufte's website is an engine for selling his lectures and books - the man has to make a living, after all. The best content is in the books, and you need to read and digest, then apply the ideas to your own context. He is not publishing self-instructional texts or 'Design for Dummies'.

He also doesn't know everything. WHat he does know is thought-provoking.

Eddie

[DanRRight]

Eddie, was laughing after reading his final paragraph with comparison of PowerPoint style with Stalin's propaganda. Leaving aside if latter was a propaganda or reality (what 90% of present Russia now thinks) his vendetta against PP is an absurd. His propaganda about Powerpoint propaganda style indeed sounds like a propaganda of nothing. When all use PP now no one pays attention to the propaganda style of PP as actually it became a bit boring now. My opinion about this guy's works now exactly expressed by the slang word "tufta".

Read this pdf just for your attention and reminding you few commonly known rules, and don't waste your money, John. Better buy the PowerPoint if you don't have one which helps anyone without graphics artist's talents quickly make the presentation way better then on all handmade transparencies circa 1980.

[DanRRight]

Ok, then next time when you come in front of your scientific public somewhere on the conference don't show them anything and just talk. Start your talk with the words "PowerPoint is a witch" (change "PowerPoint" to other presentation software like Slides, Camstudio, Wink, FlowVella, Slidesnack, Slideshare, VisualBee or all of them). Tell us here about your experience

[LitusSaxonicum]

Powerpoint is a tool, and it has its uses. It shares with 35mm slide shows a degree of inflexibility, best demonstrated when someone in the audience asks a question, because you can't depart from the preset order. Only a lousy presenter reads the slides anyway. I never lecture from notes, and know from experience that I can lecture on subjects in my discipline easily for many hours every day.

If you have 10 to 15 minutes in a conference, interruptions are rare. and Powerpoint works. For 1 or 2 hour lectures where 'teaching' is required, the effort of preparing PPTs is out of proportion to the delivery and the lack of flexibility shows. A one hour evening lecture for a professional body (yes, I do those too) also takes days to prepare.

Unfortunately for one of Dan's criticisms, I do have graphic artist's skills. Indeed, if I don't like the quality of illustrations in papers submitted to the scientific journal I have been editing in recent years, I redraw them myself!

The point about reading Tufte (and I don't know what 'tufta' means in the variant of English used in England) is to have your thought processes stimulated, not to be given a set of prescriptive rules. There are plenty of criticisms of Tufte on the internet, some of which are themselves thought provoking and very probably true.

Incidentally, Stalin's propaganda is used as an example because, due to Godwin's Law, one can no longer cite Hitler's!

[DanRRight]

Use PowerPoint from day 1, used few other presentation software titles before and during these years, saw thousands of presentations and never heard any complaints and even never complained about PP myself.

Me never complained? this is hard to believe anyone will say! I complained a lot about Adobe PDF, Word and formula editor in it, Excel, Latex, Windows, Linux, all other Fortran compilers besides Salford/Silverfrost, C/C++ and other things, countries, religions and politics. And though i do not love PP i never complained about it. Because it gave me a lot. And because we here are programmers, and what is missing in it we can program ourselves, specifically with such compiler like FTN95. For example showing animations from the hydro and PIC codes on the conferences. I just ran my codes there and people were thrilled seeing for the first time how fusion capsule explodes in front of their eyes or laser target expands. My first animations programs were made with FTN77 in the beginning of 90th. At that times that was harder (and everyone though impossible in Fortran) then making all PowerPoint prsentations

Takes a lot of time to prepare the talk? Takes hell much more time to prepare what to talk about.

I perfectly remember times when there was no PP and the only that all used were transparencies. Talk preparation was may be faster but i hated not only my own talks but the ones from all other people. So when the first overhead LCD screens first appeared (as well as tri-lamp projectors later) i've been probably the first in my area who used computers for presentations starting from around 1993-94 and perfectly remember that excluding may be couple naysayers and eternal technophobes all liked both what was said and how it was presented. Today when i see other presentations i admit that the majority makes better looking slides then me.

Even more, my experience tells that there exist a correlation between quality of graphics and the quality of work. The explanation of that is simple: if you happen to find something truly outstanding, you spend much more time, money, and involve more people including sometimes professional graphics artists into delivering better presentation!

Last decade fashionable also became to make huge size posters with the PowerPoint. I tried and so far like this very much.

[silicondale]

Hi John - I guess I'm now off your list of suspects. Certainly didn't give that link anyway. I've been on other more urgent work the last week or 6 so haven't been following the discussion.

However, I DO have a very useful style guide which I was given while working at CSIRO in Western Australia in 1995-97. It has helped me a lot with producing 'nice' Powerpoint presentations and is also relevant to graphics more generally. Includes guidelines on selection of colour combinations, fonts, annotation, etc. (avoid Comic Sans like the plague!). My copy is on paper but if I track down a digital version, will post it here.