Presentation Guidelines

Powerpoint
The oral presentation is expected to be professional and of high quality.
The presentation should last not more than an hour and is to be given using Powerpoint.
The talk will be in Hebrew. Slides can be in English or Hebrew.

Presentation Length
The presentation should take one hour. Practice your timing so that the presentation isnt too long nor too short.
Depending on the amount of "talk" per slide, I find that around 50 slides will cover an hour's talk.

Guidelines
Presentation and slides should be carefully designed. The talk should be self contained (possibly depending
on previous talks in the seminar), clear and deductive. (See technical guidelines below).
You may be given several papers for your talk. You need not cover all the information in all the papers.
You must compile all the information into a single coherent talk.
Possibly, you will need additional information (background on math tools and techniques, or classic
algorithms, or additional examples and images). You should look for these extra references yourself.
Most likely everything you need can be found on the internet (use search engines such as www.google.com
or look at the local directories associated with the papers you were given).
Do not forget to cite the relevant sources (see technical guidelines below).

Content Guidelines:
The presentation should not be too general (on a high skim-through level). A good rule of thumb is that there
should be at least 1-2 equations. On the other hand the talk should not be too technical or convoluted – e.g. in
most cases proofs of Lemmas or proofs of run-time, etc can generally be skipped over or mentioned briefly.
Equations – it is important that you understand the algorithms and equations to the last detail. However in the
presentation, do not delve too deep into the description of the algorithms or the equations. They should be
explained at an intuitive level (e.g. explain briefly and intuitively, the reason/aim/contribution of each term
in the equation).

Technical Guidelines:
- Slide Size must NOT be widescreen. (this often causes problems when projected).
Use standard On-Screen Show 4:3 (or if you must then A4 paper).
- Font size should be not be less than 28 (24 if you MUST) and preferably larger.
- A few sentences per slide, possibly itemized. Sentences need not be full, they can and should be
pin pointers (i.e. more similar to titles and key ideas rather than sentences that tell the full story).
You do not need to put on the slides everything you are going to say. the slides should contain enough
text to remind you what to say, and to give the audience an overview of the ideas the slide represents.
(you may of course have notes on paper to assist you in filling in the details you would like to express
that are not in the slide).
- The presentation should include: Motivation/Goal , Previous approaches and their cons/pros,
the new approach, including explanation of the (math/algorithmical) tools required to understand your
presentation, results and examples, summary/conclusion and a list of references and sources.
- To make the presentation, pleasant and alive, add pictures, images, icons, color. Preferably the images
should be relevant to the text, but you can also liven things up with small little icons...
- Relevant images: you should show results and examples as presented in the papers you are given.
Many images can be downloaded from the internet. But you can also scan them in.
- Often, papers and articles do not have room for figures, and express complex ideas using only text.
Your talk will greatly improve if you can invent/create figures/examples/diagrams that help understand the
text ("A picture is worth a thousand words!!!").
Guidelines re ready-made slides: given the wide availability of slides and demos on the web, it is foolish
not to take advantage of them. However, given the goals of this course, the number of ready-made slides
that you are allowed to use is limited to no more than %30 of your presentation AND each slide that
is not your own should be clearly marked and its source given.

Example Presentations:
Examples of presentations can be found here:

Practice
It is essential that you practice your talk. A talk will not be good unless you physically experience and practice
your presentation. From experience, you should give the talk at least three times. You should practice by talking
out loud preferably to an audience (a friend, relative, pet or even yourself at the mirror). This practice is essential
both for timing the talk (it should not be too long nor too short) and for promising the availability and adequacy of
your wording. Talks that have been practiced are more fluent, are given with more self confidence and are less
nerve racking for the speaker. All making a better talk.

Getting it on the Class Computer
In order to ensure that the PowerPoint file is intact and available for presentation in class, you should either
supply your own laptop, or make sure that your file is loaded on the class laptop. This means that you should give me
the file PRIOR to class. Please send the file not later than 1 day before the talk.
You must make sure that the file arrived intact and loads properly. It is YOUR responsibility.
Contact me by mail or phone to ensure that the file arrived and loads properly!