Bullets on the Brain

There is something sinister in the world of public speaking. You’ve undoubtedly been exposed to it, at work or at school. It’s probably in your home computer. But it’s not a virus. You probably paid to have it there. And according to one of the nation’s leading experts, it’s making all of us stupid.

Edward Tufte is a professor of political science, computer science and statistics, and graphic design at Yale University and has been academia’s most influential voice on the subject of the visual display of information for over two decades. He is an expert on the use of graphs and visual aids to explain all types of information, from train schedules to empirical data. He uses computers all the time to crunch numbers and present quantitative information. But Tufte is no fan of presentation software (such as Microsoft PowerPoint, Apple Keynote, Google Presentations, and Prezi). The problem, Tufte (2003) explains, is that programs like PowerPoint force presentations into an outline format, with little development beyond a series of bulleted lists. Because a typical slide contains a mere forty words—about eight seconds of reading—presentations become a succession of short, boring lists of facts, presented out of context and with little room for evaluation.

Of course, current software programs offer you the opportunity to do more than just present bulleted lists. They can add real visual interest to a speech, enabling you to easily share photographs, cartoons, charts, and graphics with an audience. If your presentation includes a lot of data, the use of a few simple graphs can help you to quickly convey quantitative information, rather than just rattling off numbers that your audience is likely to have a hard time visualizing. The problem comes in when presenters rely on the program to design the content of their speeches rather than to enhance it. Tufte finds that a program’s format “routinely disrupts, dominates, and trivializes content” (Tufte, 2003).

The best remedy? Make sure you’ve got good content and only use visual displays that really convey meaning. A solid graph, for example, doesn’t just present numbers: it helps the audience to understand the numbers you are presenting. As one tech writer, drawing on Tufte’s work, explained, “When you’re putting together a chart, you’re trying to show one of four things with the data you have: a relationship between data points, a comparison of data points, a composition of data, or a distribution of data” (Henry, 2012). Most importantly, remember that pictures may be pretty, but content is still king. “If your numbers are boring, then you’ve got the wrong numbers,” Tufte writes. “If your words or images are not on point, making them dance in color won’t make them relevant.”