Edward R. Tufte’s “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint” Presented in the Form of a PowerPoint Presentation
Overview
- PowerPoint is standard…
- …but bad.
- Why?
Cognitive Style
- Is presenter-oriented
- Audience and content suffer
- low resolution
- deeply hierarchical
- preoccupied with form
Low Resolution
- nearly content-free
- only slightly better than 1982 Pravda propaganda
Dilutes Thought
- bullets make us stupid
- too generic
- omit relationships
- omit assumptions
- omit subjects, verbs
[Interlude: analysis of Columbia disaster PowerPoint]
Deeply Hierarchical
- often six levels deep
- Feynman only needed 2
Why?
- based on software corp itself
- big bureacracy
- programming computers
- deeply hierarchical
- marketing
- misdirecting
- sloganeering
- exagerating
Why? (cont’d)
- what could be worse?
- Stalin?
- pushy
- bullets are to be followed
- based on great leader on pedestal
What else?
- Better: good teaching
- explanation, reasoning, etc.
- credible authority
PowerPoint in schools
- disturbing!
- must find replacement
- Good: teaching kids to smoke
- Better: close school, go to Exploratorium
- Best: write illustrated essay
[Interlude: performance of the Gettysburg PowerPoint]
[Interlude: what if we presented cancer survival rates in PowerPoint?]
Stylesheets
- corporate logowear
- gives name of corp dept.
- not actual people (too embarassed? - Ed.)
- emulates reading primers for 6 year-olds
- poor typography is key
- break things up to prevent comparisons
- useless tables
World Domination
- printed PowerPoints: 50 slides == 1 page of Physician’s Desk Reference
- online PowerPoints: 20% of density of popular websides
- worse signal-to-noise ratio known
Sequentiality
- bullet-point strip-tease
- disolves like random jump-cuts
- handouts would let audience control order and pace
What to do?
- immediate worldwide product recall
- it’s like an out-of-control prescription drug
Improving Presentations
- get better content
- provide handouts
- don’t have pointless ones
Final Thoughts - Ed.
- good essay
- buy lots of copies
- hand out to annoying PowerPoint presentors