new tricks for an old dog

Quick and easy powerpoint showing the physical size of a trillian dollars. Two versions are availble, ppt and pptx.

How Big is a Trillian Dollars (pptx) @box.com

How Big is a Trillian Dollars (ppt) @box.com

Tristian Miller published a satirical essay using statistics to show why he would never have a girlfriend. Using world population statistics, and adding concepts such as the bell curve, he developed his “proof.” I took the original paper, updated the statistics, and twicked it a little for my current students.

I found that we ended up discussing bell curves, beauty, intelligence, and standard deviation among other topcis during the course of the period. I intended to use the powerpoint as a filler on a light day, but we ended up filling the whole class time.

If anyone changes the statistics or makes any other changes I’d like to see a copy of what you did. Thanks.

Why you will never have a girlfriend @ box.com powerpoint format

I’ve wanted for sometime to post a few of my lessonplans and classroom materials that I have enjoyed and that students have commented on.

The first is a lesson on piece-wise functions that I developed using two blogposts that caught my interest. The two posts are by Jason Dyer and Math Teacher Mambo. The first involved an application of piece-wise functions and the second a graphing technique.

Piece-wise_Functions

Level: Advanced Alg-1, Alg-2

photo credit: rader_seth @ flickr

In my current job, I end up making a lot of presentations. These come in a few different settings, usually to people who only know me by name and I have struggled with how to make my talks relevant and interesting. That these the two ideas–being relevant and interesting–must go hand in hand is one of my core beliefs.

The site where I spent the most time was Presentation Zen. Among the goodies at the site, I found a few posts on different presentation styles.

The 4 that interested me the most are:

(1) Lessig Method–Named after Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig. A great illustration is found here (available for either download or streaming). This method uses lots of slides (hundreds) often with only a word or a phase on it, flashing across the screen quickly. If a word or concept is repeated, so is the exact same slide.

(2) Godin Method– Named after Seth Godin. A sample presentation can be found here. Godin’s 5 rules for powerpoint are:

1. No more than six words on a slide. EVER. There is no presentation so complex that this rule needs to be broken.
2. No cheesy images. Use professional stock photo images.
3. No dissolves, spins or other transitions.
4. Sound effects can be used a few times per presentation, but never use the sound effects that are built in to the program. Instead, rip sounds and music from CDs and leverage the Proustian effect this can have. If people start bouncing up and down to the Grateful Dead, you’ve kept them from falling asleep, and you’ve reminded them that this isn’t a typical meeting you’re running.
5. Don’t hand out print-outs of your slides. They don’t work without you there.

(3) The Kawasaki Method–Named after Guy Kawasaki. To quote from his blog:

“…I am trying to evangelize the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points…Ten is the optimal number of slides in a PowerPoint presentation because a normal human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in a meeting…” (link) (video here)

(4) Takahashi Method–Named after Masayoshi Takahashi a computer programer who developed the style because he did not have access to presentation software. It involves using large text only. A sample presentation can be found here.

There are a few other interesting posts at Presentation Zen. These two (here and here) compare and contrast the presentation styles of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.