Journal sielwolf's Journal: Endgame PHLUCK 2
How often are the words 'superb' and 'I could not have done it better myself' spoken about a presentation? For my Seminar class a more apropo question would be how often was anything positive said about a student presentation?
The answer is never... until today. Yep, me and my buddy straight up slayed them.
If you've been following the story you know that my buddy and I were doing the first two parts of the presentation while our mystery third member was doing the third. My friend was leading off with the introductions ("what is this and how does it work") and I was going to do the mathematical analysis ("why it works"). The problem was that the paper was a Papadimitriou algorithm paper which isn't the easiest sort to swallow. Let alone distill into a comprehensible presentation. But we knew that's what we must do:
Distill the paper to its Essence.
Actually that's what you have to do for any paper. An intelligent person then only has to fill in the gaps (since they know the root, the middle and the results). My part was the more difficult as it dealt with the results of a lot of theorem proving.
So I came up with an example. A planned chalkboard example to sit side by side with our Powerpoint. "Show the space. Draw a vector parallel to one of the axes. That vector is a document. See how it's parallel to that 'computer' axis? That means this document is more associated with the 'computer' topic. Now lets draw this other vector. It too is a document. You see how it's orthogonal? That means it is in the 'coffee' topic. Not only that but Papadimitriou says..."
On and on. Presenting is about handholding. Even the bravest mind can't withstand slide after slide of algorithms. We need grounding. To understand.
And that's what we did. Now compare that to what our third guy. He started writing algorithms on the chalkboard... and more algorithms... and more. The minutae of lemmas and sub-theorems. He was doing what the paper did. But the paper is a reviewable document. You can go back to it. But doing that in a presentation is beating around the bush. Knock off the foreplay and just hit that spot.
The metric of our part and his part is the prof's interaction. You know you are tanking when the prof says "Could you explain that more clear?". And you are done when he comes up to the board and takes the chalk out of your hand. He did that several times for our third member.
He questioned one thing in my buddy's intro once (should there have been an 'arg' before our 'min' statement... and I think my buddy was right).
And he did nothing during mine. He just sat back and watched. Well ok, he DID pipe up. But it was when I said "I think 1.4 radians is about 80 degrees or so". The whole class chimed in trying to prove the calculative abilities of the mass between their ears. And they were all quieted when some guy broke out the TI.
Then after it all he spoke those above words and I was shocked. I thought "was that a complement? Was that the first complement this entire semester?" He went on to say that he liked how we used simple examples to explain things and that the third guy should have done the same.
Score!
Of course another friend of mine in there said that a 48 hour presentation was better than what the prof could've 'done himself' spoke volumes to his teaching ability. And there was also the caveat that we might have been the last student presentation. Which means a fourth of the class didn't have to do any presentation! If that's true I'm going to feel really fucking jipped!
But now I'm just relieved it is all over with...
So what about my car? Well I got a call this morning from Saturn. They told me they couldn't find anything wrong with it! They traced back the problem to an EGR valve not getting enough voltage. What caused it? Who knows because they tested it and test drove it and couldn't find anything wrong. They think it might have been some carbon buildup that had blocked some gate. It might also be water in the fuel line. So my plan is to stop getting gas at the local gasstation and do a little highway driving before lecture today. Hopefully my car doesn't crap out. But they only charged me for a half-hour labor so in case anything does come up they can continue from there.
I'm King of the World.
*...pppppPPPPFFFFFFFFTHPT*! [arrow hits Sielwolf in chest]
message for me? (Score:1)
Is there a message for me attached to that arrow?
I do think your presentation went well. I hate when people over use powerpoint and think that their entire presentation can be based off of that. I can't tell you how many times we've had 20 minute (maximum, shoot for 15 usually) student presentations and the student loads a presentation with "Slide 1 of 72" in the lower right hand corner. Then they proceed to read each slide, word for word, adding nothing more to the words on the screen.
In that world I find it so refreshing when students use no powerpoint and still seem prepared (not: "we just threw this together 5 mins before class and didn't have time to do the powerpoint we wanted, we we'll wing it through some hand waving at the board, where we'll write really small with bad handwriting and use examples that go no where.") that it greatly enhances their grade.
Re:message for me? (Score:2)
It reminds me of that United Way NFL commercial when that kindergartener asks a football player "Where does lightning come from?" and the player launches into this long explaination of the physics and stuff. When he stops the kid gives him this dazed look and asks, "I just wanted to know if it came from the sky or not."