The Psychology of PowerPoint

Science Fiction blog io9 reported on a presentation by cognitive scientist Stephen M. Kosslyn at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston on 15 February, 2008 about using cognitive science to improve your powerpoint presentations. There are, apparently, four basic rules:

• The Goldilocks Rule
• present just the right amount of data
• never include more information than your audience needs
  

• The Rudolph Rule
• make key information stand out like Rudolph’s nose so that you guide your audience’s attention to it
• “The human brain is a difference detector.”
  

• The Rule of Four
• Generally, the brain can hold only four pieces of information at once so limit yourself to presenting four things at a time.
  

• The Birds of a Feather Rule
• if you want to indicate that certain things belong together, group them by giving them a similar colour, shape, or location in the visual field.
  

The goofy rule names? It’s always easier to remember something unfamiliar if it’s named for something familiar.

New Yorker Does Short Fiction Podcasts

The inimitable Boing Boing reports that the New Yorker (best magazine evah!) is publishing podcasts of some of its short fiction. Each month the mag asks one authour to pick a favourite from the NYer archives and then read it.

I'll be signing up.

10 Rules for Creativity

Never underestimate a nun (in this case, Sister Corita Kent).

Immaculate Heart College Rules (art department):

1. Find a place you trust and then try trusting it for a while.
2. General duties of a student: pull everything out of your teacher, pull everything out of your fellow students.
3. General duties of a teacher: pull everything out of your students.
4. Consider everything an experiment.
5. Be self-disciplined. This means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.
6. Nothing is a mistake. There is no win and no fail. There is only make.
7. The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all the time who eventually catch on to things.
8. Don’t try to create and analyse at the same time. They’re different processes.
9. Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.
10. “We’re breaking all of the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.” - John Cage.

Helpful hints: Always be around. Come or go to everything always. Go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully often. Save everything, it might come in handy later.

There should be new rules next week.

Courtesy of Michal Migurski

The Professional versus the Inspired Amateur

Great article by Steve Martin in February issue of The Smithsonian magazine. It occurred to me on reading it that there's a lot of overlap between stand-up comedy and teaching. Here's something surprising that he has to say about the difference between being great and being good:

The consistent work enhanced my act. I learned a lesson: it was easy to be great. Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights are accidental and statistical: like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time. What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the circumstances. Performing in so many varied situations made every predicament manageable, from Toronto, where I performed next to an active salad bar, to the well-paying but soul-killing Playboy Clubs, where I was almost but not quite able to go over. But as I continued to work, my material grew; I came up with odd little gags such as "How many people have never raised their hands before?"

Well, that difference between being great when inspired, when the spirit moves you, and being consistently good is precisely what it means to be a professional, isn't it? Amateurs can be great at what they do because they can be inspired but that's something that's outside your control - by definition. You have to depend on the muses to be inspired and they are...fickle. But a professional has honed his or her craft to the point where he or she is at least good pretty much all the time.

Someday, when you're really a professional, all your classes will be good and, when inspiration does strike, you'll be great.