Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Copyright
You might be tempted to think that, in a talk, which may leave no permanent record,
it is acceptable to use images, figures, and text created by other people. However, as
a general principle, you should only include materials that you have the right to use.
Consider the text or figures on your slides.Was any of it authored by someone else?
If so, will that person be in the audience? What about people who are familiar with
that person's work? If people notice that you have used someone else's materials, they
could well react immediately, and ask difficult questions in front of a broad audience.
Even if reuse of material is not noticed, it still can have inappropriate conse-
quences. One is that people make judgements about you, and your capabilities,
based on your words and images—and in this case their inferences will be false.
It is unethical to deceive people about either your work or your competencies as a
researcher.
Sometimes the borrowing is deliberate and obvious, and thus may not seemdecep-
tive. An example is use of cartoons from newspapers. But are they licenced for you
to use? And the lifetime of your talk may be longer than you expect. It may be
recorded, and possibly even made generally available via a conference or university
website. You may re-use the slides later on, or your advisor might ask to borrow
them. Inappropriate inclusion of material that is not yours might never be noticed,
but, if it does come to light, could cause serious embarrassment.
Text on Slides
The text included on slides provides structure and context. It is usually written in
point form; the points should be brief summaries in short sentences of the information
you want to convey. The audience will expect you to discuss every point listed on
each slide, or, rather, expect that by the time you switch to the next slide the content
of every point will have been covered. Each point should be a topic to discuss, not
necessarily a complete statement in itself. A slide may be a series of points, but that
doesn't mean that the points need to be numbered or even bulleted. Some people
argue that bullets add interest; slide after slide of slabs of text can be dull, but bullets
(which are greatly overused) do not make much difference.
Some speakers use a kind of pidgin-English for their slides.
Coding technique log-based, integer codes.
Be brief, but not meaningless.
The coding technique is logarithmic but yields integer codes.
Explain all variables and where possible simplify formulas. In papers it is helpful to
state types of variables when they are used; in talks it is crucial. Minimize the volume
