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Alex Tabarrok

George Mason University

How Not to Give

A

Bad Seminar

How to Give a Great Seminar

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Practice!

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Practicing a Talk is Like Editing a Paper

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A Good Seminar

is a

Good Story

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  • Hook Your Audience
  • You have five minutes to tell your audience why they shouldn’t walk out on you.
    • What’s the question, the puzzle, the issue?
    • Get curiosity on your side.
      • If people believe that they have a gap in their knowledge that you will fill, they will listen.

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How to Organize a Talk/Paper

  • Hook
  • Research Question – what is your specific question and what is your value added in terms of theory/data/technique. Brief discussion of antecedents.
  • Preview of main results (optional)
  • Data
  • Research Design-where is identification coming from?
  • Results
  • Robustness Tests/Limitations
  • The Takeaway

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Every Slide Should Have a Purpose

  • The purpose is NOT to remind you what to say.
  • The purpose is to advance your story and to help your audience follow along.
    • If someone’s attention slips for 30 seconds can they catch up by looking at your slide?
  • Title the slide with the purpose.

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  • Graphs should be labelled.
  • Note should describe source of data and any transformations.
  • Graphs should be titled with the takeaway not just a description of what is graphed.

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What Not to Include is as Important as�What to Include

  • Economize on words.
    • Use pictures and graphs.
    • If you have a theorem, give an example.
        • If it’s not key, save the proof for the paper.
  • Assume you are talking to smart people but not experts.
    • Think Journal of Economic Perspectives not Econometrica.

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  • Your presentation must be readable from the back of the room.
  • Tables of empirical results should focus on coefficient(s) of interest.
    • Control Variables? Yes.
    • State Fixed Effects? Yes
    • Save full-blown results for appendix slides. 

Don’t Do This

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Slides

  • Don’t use a lot of eye candy.
  • These slides use too much!
      • At least for a job talk. Remember, know your audience.
  • Powerpoint is fine, the main danger is forgetting point one.
  • Beamer is a powerful and elegant Latex package for slides.
    • Not as convenient as powerpoint for pictures.
    • Great for equations and integration with your Latex document.
    • The cool kids use Beamer for job talks, maybe you should too.

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Before the Talk

  • Ask in advance, How long is the seminar? Prepare appropriately.
  • Know your audience. Prepare appropriately.
  • Send your slides in advance.
  • Bring your slides on a USB & also have them online somewhere (I send mine to my Gmail account).
  • It is YOUR talk. Take property rights over anything attached to it.

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The Day of the Talk

  • Arrive at the seminar room early.
    • Check that your slides are ready, that you have a clicker, that you know how to advance the slides, that the formatting is correct, make sure you have chalk, markers, a glass of water etc.
    • Be ready to have slides printed if necessary.
  • Do not waste your audience’s time.

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Presentation Style

  • Face your audience!
  • Practice so that you know your slides at a glance.
  • You are telling the story of your research not reading slides.

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Presentation Style

  • Practice so that you have enough mental bandwidth to present and monitor yourself at the same time.
    • Be aware of verbal tics.
    • Be aware of pacing – you want to mix fast and slow, loud and soft.
    • Be aware of where you are standing. Move but do not pace.

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Assume the Steve Jobs Posture

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Do Not Let the Audience Dominate You!

    • Practice so that you won’t be thrown by a question or an interruption and can quickly get back to your story.
    • Every dept has at least one person who asks the same question at every seminar.
      • Be respectful but don’t get thrown off your story. Acceptable answers include:
        • Good point, I’ll look at that.
        • Let me hold off on that until I get a bit further and then I’ll come to that.
        • I don’t know. Let’s discuss further afterwards.
    • When answering questions avoid side-discussions. Speak to your audience.
  • Presentations in economics can be a combat sport!

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One More Thing…

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As you tell the story

of

your research.

Convey your excitement!

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Further Resources

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