Evil Geniuses Teach How (NOT) To Use PowerPoint (YouTube via Danger Room)

Wired magazine's excellent blog, Danger Room takes another look at the use of PowerPoint in the US military. While the entire article is worth reading (Danger Room has covered the relationship between PPT and the military extensively), the video embedded below is priceless...

Why Good Data Isn't Enough (British Medical Journal And The University Of Michigan)

You are briefing the boss today and you are pretty excited.  You were tasked to take a hard look at two different ways of doing the same thing -- the "old way" and the "new way".  The old way was OK but your research clearly shows that the new way is much better.

You stand up in front of the boss.  You know you are speaking a little quickly (you may not even be pausing all that much) and your voice is probably a little higher than it usually is -- but none of that matters.  Your data is rock solid.

In fact, you have even put your great data into a pie graph that clearly identifies the validity of your position.  This is your ace in the hole because you know the boss loves pie graphs.

All of this explains why you are stunned when the boss decides to continue to do things the old way.

Two interesting studies, one quite old and one brand new, explain why what you said mattered far less than how you said it.

http://www.bmj.com/content/318/7197/1527.full

The first study, from 1999,"Influence of data display formats on physician investigators' decisions to stop clinical trials: prospective trial with repeated measure" from the British Medical Journal (hat tip to social network analysis expert Valdis Krebs and his prolific Twittering) asked a number of physicians to look at the exact same data using one of four different visualization techniques -- bar graph, pie graph, chart or "icons".  You can see the four different charts in the picture to the right.  Note:  The test subjects only saw one of these, not all four together at once.

Now, I admit, these charts are a little dense at first.  Basically you have 2 different groups, those who started the study with a good prognosis and those who started the study with a poor prognosis.  You also have those who received the old treatment and those that received the new treatment.

The question was, based on these results, do you continue this study or not?  The doctors involved in the study were all research physicians and used to seeing this kind of data and making these kinds of decisions. 

Despite the fact that the data was exactly the same in all four images and that the data was overwhelmingly in support of the new treatment option, there was a satistically significant difference in the accuracy rate of the physician's decisions based exclusively on how the data was presented.

The least accurate?  Pie and bar graphs.  Charts did OK but the best option was the "icons". 

This kind of iconic chart is probably new to many readers.  It shows the impact of the treatments on every single patient in the study.  While this kind of display yielded the most accurate results in the study, it was also the most disliked by the test subjects.

The overwhelming preference was for the chart, while a minority preferred the bar or pie graphs.  Not only did none of the participants indicate that they preferred the icons, a significant number of them expressed derision at the format in their after action comments.

This study reminds me of a series of studies conducted by Ulrich Hoffrage and Gerd Gigerenzer at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin that demonstrate that expressing statistics using "natural frequencies" (e.g. 2 out of 20 instead of the more common 10%) leads to better understanding and better (i.e. more "Bayesian") reasoning (Jen Lee, Hema Deshmukh and I were able to replicate these results using a typical analytic problem so I believe that this effect is important in the context of intelligence as well).

The second piece of research is from the University of Michigan's Institute For Social Research and is still in pre-publication review.  In what appears to be a very cleverly designed study, researchers looked at 200 telephone interviewers (100 male and 100 female).

They found that interviewers who spoke moderately fast, with lower pitched voices (if male) and with 4 to 5 natural pauses per minute were the most effective at getting people to listen to them.

Combining the results of these studies, it is easy to imagine that the most powerful presentation would be one using icons combined with a proficient speaker.  The opposite (as demonstrated in the story that started this post) could reasonably be expected to perform less well -- even if the information were exactly the same.

As I have said before, like it or not, it is not enough to have good info, you have to be able to communicate it effectively as well.  The flip side of this coin is equally important for intelligence professionals -- we may well be hard-wired to be biased towards high quality forms of communication, even if the quality of the content is second rate.

PowerPoint Templates? PowerPoint Alternatives? (Link List)

One of my students (Thanks, Jeff!) asked me this morning if I knew of any place to find high quality, free PowerPoint templates.

He had already looked at the MS Office template repository and had done the standard Google search and found the MS templates to be good but over-used by his classmates, the truly free offerings to be of fairly poor quality and the good quality templates to be out of his "poor college student's" price range.

I suggested that he use either Google's advanced search feature to look for .PPT files that were "free to use or share" or use one of the several PowerPoint specific search engines to help him find additional templates or backgrounds he could use.

Another alternative , of course, is simply not to use PowerPoint. There are a number of alternatives including, for example, Impress, which comes bundled with the OpenOffice Suite of software. OpenOffice is free and open source software which mimics (and in some cases improves) on MS Office's functionality. It works with most operating systems (including Windows and Mac).

Ever since I started using Ubuntu (a Linux distribution) on my laptop, I have been impressed with OpenOffice (which comes bundled automatically with Ubuntu). I have not had a chance to use Impress other than as a tool to view .PPT presentations but it has worked flawlessly. I also noticed that there were a number of free (and fairly attractive) template sites dedicated to Impress (an example of one is here).

If you look to online presentation applications, the alternatives seem even more robust. Rotorblog lists a number of options worth exploring. Two of these I have seen in action, Sliderocket and Prezi, and I think they could both be used to make a very interesting presentation.

Of course, the final option is to dramatically change your presentation style. We tend to focus on a "standard professional" style here at Mercyhurst that minimizes the flash and focuses more on substance.

There are a wide variety of other styles out there, however. Presentation Zen has captured some of them including the "Lessig Method", the "Godin Method", The "Kawasaki Method" and the "Takahashi Method". Not all of these methods are appropriate for intelligence briefings but there may well be some elements which can transfer effectively.

Have your own favorite tool, template source or presentation style? Leave a comment!

How To: Pick The Right Chart (Extreme Presentation via Lifehacker)

Andrew Abela, author of the Extreme Presentation Method, has a very interesting graphic that offers some ideas about the best kind of chart to use when displaying a particular kind of data or relationship.

You can get a feel for what the full graphic looks like in the image below. To get the full picture just click on the link above or the picture itself and you can get the full download.


The Lifehacker article (where I learned about the chart of charts...) also points to a MS Excel 2007 plug-in that does much the same thing but works automatically and within Excel.

The Professional Communications Toolkit (SAGE)

Presentation skills are incredibly important for intelligence professionals. It is not by chance that the item tagged in this blog the most so far has been "presentation". You have to be smart to be in intelligence but coupling those smarts with excellent briefing skills can help take you far.

I received an email the other day that pointed me to an interesting book, The Professional Communications Toolkit by Joel Whalen (Thanks, Pat!). I skimmed the three chapters available online and all were worth the time and the rest of the book seems equally valuable. As always, the notes in italics are mine.

Chapter 1 - Effective Communication: Its Not About You

Highlights:

• "Effective communication happens in the mind of the person who receives your message, not in your mind."
  

• "When you get a meaningful thought, a part of your brain called the limbic system activates (Gershon, 1999). A surge of neurotransmitters is produced that resonates with cousin-receptors residing in your gut. Literally, your gut—from the back of your throat, down your esophagus, through your stomach and intestines—is lined with the same type of receptors that compose your brain."
  

• "Your listeners believe what you’re saying is important and true, not just because they think you make “sense.” Their bodies work with the cerebral cortex to form 'Felt Sense'. The Felt Sense feeling tells them that what you’re saying is the truth."
  

Chapter 3 - The Power and Limitations of Speaking

Highlights (Some interesting explanations of recent neurological research here as well):

• "The most typical result of communication is miscommunication. Each communication results in a different meaning in the speaker’s mind and the listener’s mind. So, if you’re thinking “people don’t always understand me when I need them to,” you’re in good company."
  

• "Repetition does not work—You may have been taught that repetition aids memory. Advertising people are advised to repeat their ideas three times in a commercial. I’ve learned that repetition does not get your listener to remember. What does aid memory, every time, is things said first, last, and sensory-rich messages."
  

• "What is always forgotten—The demonstrators forget numbers, names, and other details. They also don’t remember any sequence of events. If a story has four steps, people forget the order of when things happen. When you speak, you create a sense that things happen simultaneously, in flashes."
  

Chapter 5 - Managing Communication Anxiety

Highlights (Lots of good tips here for managing your fears when you have to speak in public):

• "When you get speech anxiety, your pulse soars to intense levels, as it does during heavy physical exercise. After 3 to 5 minutes, your body begins to slow down, and your pulse drops dramatically to 90 to 100 beats per minute (bpm)."
  

• "It’s as if you’re temporarily insane."

• "Some anxiety is good (See chart below).

Nixon Could've Invented The Internet And Other Gems (Secrecy News)

Secrecy News reports on the recent declassification and release of a previously Top Secret/Sensistive/Codeword document regarding the strengths, weaknesses and, surprisingly, the methods of preparation of the CIA's President's Daily Brief (PDB) under Nixon and Kissinger. Secrecy News highlights the inconsistencies of the CIA's position with regard to the declassification of PDBs (According to Meredith Fuchs at the National Security Archive (and quoted in the Secrecy News piece), "What is most amazing is that one day they say the method of producing [the PDB] is so secret that nothing about the document can be disclosed, and then not long after they release this detailed, hour by hour explanation of how it is produced...") but there are other golden nuggets of information in this document:

• Policymaking vs. Intelligence. There is an extensive discussion about the relationship between the PDB and the NSC's own policy and analysis "Situation Room document" and the degree to which they overlapped and competed. Andrew Marshall, the author of the memo to Kissinger, summed up with the comment "the success of the Situation Room Product probably has driven the CIA's PDB out of the focus of the President's attention". Ouch!

• Office Politics And Intelligence. Check out this quote: "This situation presents a number of awkward problems. The CIA is not likely to suggest stopping production of the PDB. CIA has a major institutional stake in the PDB. It will not give it up easily. Moreover, in a recent discussion with Jack Smith, he strongly expressed his view that the CIA people almost consider themselves almost as part of the President's staff. They have no other natural superior. I told him I thought that view somewhat unrealistic in organizational and bureaucratic terms. But nonetheless, it may be the view of some of them and suggestive of their likely reluctance to given up production of the PDB. Over time they are likely to find out about the current situation if it persists." The condescension is almost palpable here. It is interesting to note that this reaction was only relevant to Nixon. Apparently (according to the document) Kennedy and Johnson thought highly of the CIA product.

• It is also worth noting the number of clear statements of likelihood in this paragraph. The intelligence community has wrestled with the question of Words of Estimative Probability for many years and I wonder if there is a correlation between how the CIA products were being written at the time and the desires of the decisionmakers -- particularly Kissinger. If Kissinger liked, for example, documents with clear statements of likelihood (whether that preference were implicit or explicit), you would expect to find that mirrored in his staff's reports and, more importantly, in his staff's selection of reports for the President to read. Perhaps it was the way they were written that kept them off the President's desk...
  

• Lack of Feedback and Information Overload. Both of these topics are covered extensively in this document. Like WEPs, these two problems have a long history with the intelligence community and it is interesting to see a senior level staffer address them so directly.

• Nixon and the Internet. One of the most interesting discussions comes at the end of the document where the author cautiously recommends a new sort of intelligence portal for Kissinger and the President:

• Sounds a lot like the internet to me, complete with hyperlinks, etc. Apparently it did not happen at least partly because, as the report itself notes, "the balance of experience has been that top-level executives don't like gadgets."

Death By Powerpoint (Slideshare)

Thanks to Lifehacker for highlighting this great slideshow over on Slideshare. While the advice in the slideshow seems to be mainly about motivating people, there are some good tips and points here for intelligence briefers.

| View | Upload your own

VectorMagic

Ever tried to insert a graphic into a poster or other product only to find the image pixelated at large sizes? Stanford comes to the rescue with VectorMagic. Apparently it is not a perfect tool but it is a good start when you want to blow something up without making it look grainy. Certainly worth a try.

Intel Official: Expect Less Privacy (NY Times)

There has been a good bit of talk already about DDNI Donald Kerr's speech regarding changing definitions of privacy. I am not sure I can add much to the debate but I have a couple of observations:

• First, giving up information voluntarily to a site like Facebook is very different than the government looking at your private life without permission. Kerr states, according to the NY Times, "''I think all of us have to really take stock of what we already are willing to give up, in terms of anonymity, but (also) what safeguards we want in place to be sure that giving that doesn't empty our bank account or do something equally bad elsewhere.'' Much of what is done on most sites is to our direct benefit; much of what the government would do would be to our indirect benefit and I am not sure that giving up traditional notions of privacy is worth it.

• Second, I think Facebook is a particularly bad example of giving up anonymity. I have just recently become active on Facebook and it seems to me that much of what is happening there is advertisement. Maybe that is too strong but the idea that people present a particular public view of themselves on Facebook rather than their private view of themselves is almost cliche' among users of social networking sites (for a funny but NSFM (Not safe for mom) send up of the lies people tell on MySpace, listen to Pete Miser's "Add Me!").

• Finally, it is interesting to compare notions of identity in cyberspace with notions of privacy. For a really good talk about new notions of identity, see Dick Clarence Hardt's speech about Identity 2.0 at OSCON 05. The speech itself is worth watching if only for the very different style Hardt uses but the content is worth listening to as well.
  

How to Cut Crutch Words When Giving a Speech (Lifehack.org)

Lifehack.org, one of my favorite blogs, has a good article on how to cut the umms and ahhs out of a speech. I particularly like the idea of counting the umms. One idea that was not mentioned in the report is to film your practice sessions. You will notice -- and be able to fix -- things you have never noticed before by watching yourself present.

Free Sound Effects (Soundsnap.com)

Sound effects, if used properly, can add a good bit to slide shows or other presentations. Here is an interesting site with a variety of sound clips that are very easy to download.

Free Document Templates (MakeUseOf.com)

The thoroughly excellent blog, MakeUseOf.com, has a very good article on where to download free document templates.