WEBVTT 00:00:19.220 --> 00:00:23.840 PATRICK WINSTON: The Uniform Code of Military Justice 00:00:23.840 --> 00:00:27.530 specifies court martial for any officer who sends a soldier 00:00:27.530 --> 00:00:30.620 into battle without a weapon. 00:00:30.620 --> 00:00:32.995 There ought to be a similar protection for students 00:00:32.995 --> 00:00:34.370 because students shouldn't go out 00:00:34.370 --> 00:00:38.070 into life without the ability to communicate, 00:00:38.070 --> 00:00:40.340 and that's because your success in life 00:00:40.340 --> 00:00:43.760 will be determined largely by your ability to speak, 00:00:43.760 --> 00:00:47.840 your ability to write, and the quality of your ideas, 00:00:47.840 --> 00:00:50.840 in that order. 00:00:50.840 --> 00:00:52.670 I know that I can be successful in this 00:00:52.670 --> 00:00:57.050 because the quality of communication, 00:00:57.050 --> 00:00:59.450 your speaking, your writing, is largely 00:00:59.450 --> 00:01:01.880 determined by this formula. 00:01:01.880 --> 00:01:05.150 It's a matter of how much knowledge you have, 00:01:05.150 --> 00:01:07.670 how much you practice with that knowledge, 00:01:07.670 --> 00:01:10.100 and your inherent talent, and notice 00:01:10.100 --> 00:01:12.230 that the T is very small. 00:01:12.230 --> 00:01:15.860 What really matters is what you know. 00:01:15.860 --> 00:01:19.970 This point came to me suddenly a few decades ago when 00:01:19.970 --> 00:01:22.610 I was skiing at Sun Valley. 00:01:22.610 --> 00:01:25.430 I had heard that it was Celebrity Weekend, and one 00:01:25.430 --> 00:01:30.800 of the celebrities was Mary Lou Retton, 00:01:30.800 --> 00:01:35.480 famous Olympic gymnast, perfect 10s in the vault. 00:01:35.480 --> 00:01:38.510 And I heard that she was a novice at skiing, 00:01:38.510 --> 00:01:40.070 so when the opportune moment arrived, 00:01:40.070 --> 00:01:42.470 I looked over on the novice slope 00:01:42.470 --> 00:01:46.270 and saw this young woman who, when she became unbalanced, 00:01:46.270 --> 00:01:48.350 went like that. 00:01:48.350 --> 00:01:50.330 And I said that's got to be her. 00:01:50.330 --> 00:01:53.570 That must be the gymnast. 00:01:53.570 --> 00:01:56.210 But then, it occurred to me, I'm a much better skier 00:01:56.210 --> 00:01:58.820 than she is, and she's an Olympic athlete-- not only 00:01:58.820 --> 00:02:03.230 an ordinary Olympic athlete, an outstanding one. 00:02:03.230 --> 00:02:08.120 And I was a better skier because I had the K, and I had the P, 00:02:08.120 --> 00:02:10.729 and all she had was the T. So you 00:02:10.729 --> 00:02:12.860 can get a lot better than people who 00:02:12.860 --> 00:02:15.140 may have inherent talents if you have 00:02:15.140 --> 00:02:17.460 the right amount of knowledge. 00:02:17.460 --> 00:02:20.960 So that's what my objective is today, and here's my promise. 00:02:20.960 --> 00:02:24.830 Today, you will see some examples 00:02:24.830 --> 00:02:28.400 of what you can put in your armamentarium of speaking 00:02:28.400 --> 00:02:32.810 techniques, and it will be the case 00:02:32.810 --> 00:02:37.640 that some one of those examples, some heuristic, some technique, 00:02:37.640 --> 00:02:40.040 maybe only one, will make-- 00:02:40.040 --> 00:02:43.050 will be the one that gets you the job. 00:02:43.050 --> 00:02:45.600 And so this is a very non-linear process. 00:02:45.600 --> 00:02:47.752 You never know when it's going to happen, 00:02:47.752 --> 00:02:48.710 but that is my promise. 00:02:48.710 --> 00:02:52.350 By the end of the next 60 minutes, 00:02:52.350 --> 00:02:55.490 you'll have been exposed to a lot of ideas, some of which 00:02:55.490 --> 00:02:58.180 you'll incorporate into your own repertoire, 00:02:58.180 --> 00:03:03.080 and they will ensure that you get the maximum opportunity 00:03:03.080 --> 00:03:09.410 to have your ideas valued and accepted 00:03:09.410 --> 00:03:11.900 by the people you speak with. 00:03:11.900 --> 00:03:14.300 Now, in order to do that, we have 00:03:14.300 --> 00:03:17.150 to have a rule of engagement, and that 00:03:17.150 --> 00:03:22.710 is no laptops, no cell phones. 00:03:22.710 --> 00:03:24.600 So if you could close those, I'll 00:03:24.600 --> 00:03:27.300 start up as soon as you're done. 00:03:27.300 --> 00:03:31.800 Some people ask why that is a rule of engagement, 00:03:31.800 --> 00:03:34.830 and the answer is, we humans only 00:03:34.830 --> 00:03:36.990 have one language processor. 00:03:36.990 --> 00:03:38.760 And if your language processor is enga-- 00:03:38.760 --> 00:03:40.590 could you shut the laptop, please? 00:03:40.590 --> 00:03:44.850 If your language processor is engaged browsing the web 00:03:44.850 --> 00:03:48.030 or reading your email, you're distracted. 00:03:48.030 --> 00:03:50.880 And worse yet, you distract all of the people around you. 00:03:50.880 --> 00:03:52.570 Studies have shown that. 00:03:52.570 --> 00:03:56.160 And worse yet, if I see a open laptop somewhere back 00:03:56.160 --> 00:04:02.470 there or up here, it drives me nuts, and I do a worse job. 00:04:02.470 --> 00:04:04.710 And so that ensures that all of your friends 00:04:04.710 --> 00:04:08.520 who are paying attention don't get the performance 00:04:08.520 --> 00:04:11.230 that they came to have. 00:04:11.230 --> 00:04:13.830 So that's it for preamble. 00:04:13.830 --> 00:04:16.620 Let's get started. 00:04:16.620 --> 00:04:19.670 First thing we talk about, of course, is how to start. 00:04:25.470 --> 00:04:28.740 Some people think the right thing to do 00:04:28.740 --> 00:04:32.140 is to start a talk with a joke. 00:04:39.530 --> 00:04:44.300 I don't recommend it, and the reason 00:04:44.300 --> 00:04:46.820 is that, in the beginning of a talk, 00:04:46.820 --> 00:04:49.420 people are still putting their laptops away. 00:04:49.420 --> 00:04:52.250 They're becoming adjusted to your speaking parameters, 00:04:52.250 --> 00:04:58.670 to your vocal parameters, and they're not ready for a joke. 00:04:58.670 --> 00:05:00.090 So it doesn't work very well. 00:05:00.090 --> 00:05:02.420 They usually fall flat. 00:05:02.420 --> 00:05:06.110 What you want to do instead is start with empowerment promise. 00:05:09.560 --> 00:05:11.060 You want to tell people what they're 00:05:11.060 --> 00:05:13.660 going to know at the end of the hour 00:05:13.660 --> 00:05:16.560 that they didn't know at the beginning of the hour. 00:05:16.560 --> 00:05:17.808 It's an empowerment promise. 00:05:17.808 --> 00:05:19.100 It's the reason for being here. 00:05:21.660 --> 00:05:22.910 What would be an example? 00:05:22.910 --> 00:05:24.230 Oh, I see. 00:05:24.230 --> 00:05:28.820 At the end of this 60 minutes, you will know things 00:05:28.820 --> 00:05:30.952 about speaking you don't know now, 00:05:30.952 --> 00:05:32.660 and something among those things you know 00:05:32.660 --> 00:05:34.310 will make a difference in your life. 00:05:34.310 --> 00:05:36.200 Yeah, that's an empowerment promise, 00:05:36.200 --> 00:05:38.960 so that's the best way to start. 00:05:38.960 --> 00:05:41.540 So now that I've talked a little bit about how to start, 00:05:41.540 --> 00:05:44.900 what I want to do is give you some samples of heuristics 00:05:44.900 --> 00:05:48.970 that are always on my mind when I give a talk, 00:05:48.970 --> 00:05:53.185 and first of these heuristics is that it's a good idea to cycle 00:05:53.185 --> 00:05:53.810 on the subject. 00:05:56.480 --> 00:05:57.980 Go around it. 00:05:57.980 --> 00:05:59.360 Go round it again. 00:05:59.360 --> 00:06:01.250 Go round it again. 00:06:01.250 --> 00:06:05.900 Some people say, tell him what you want to tell him. 00:06:05.900 --> 00:06:08.690 Tell him again, and then tell him a third time, 00:06:08.690 --> 00:06:11.900 as if people weren't intelligent. 00:06:11.900 --> 00:06:12.830 But the point is-- 00:06:12.830 --> 00:06:16.190 the reason is-- well, there are many reasons, one of which 00:06:16.190 --> 00:06:19.340 is, at any given moment, about 20% of you 00:06:19.340 --> 00:06:22.030 will be fogged out no matter what the lecture is. 00:06:22.030 --> 00:06:24.530 So if you want to ensure that the probability that everybody 00:06:24.530 --> 00:06:29.120 gets it is high, you need to say it three times. 00:06:29.120 --> 00:06:31.250 So cycling is one of the things that I always 00:06:31.250 --> 00:06:33.500 think about when I give a talk. 00:06:33.500 --> 00:06:38.190 Another thing I think about is, in explaining my idea, 00:06:38.190 --> 00:06:45.590 I want to build a fence around it so that it's not confused 00:06:45.590 --> 00:06:48.030 with somebody else's idea. 00:06:48.030 --> 00:06:50.900 So if you were from Mars, and I was teaching you 00:06:50.900 --> 00:06:53.510 about what an arch is, I might say to you, 00:06:53.510 --> 00:06:55.333 well, that's an arch. 00:06:55.333 --> 00:06:57.500 And that's not to be confused with some other things 00:06:57.500 --> 00:06:58.970 that other people might think is-- 00:06:58.970 --> 00:06:59.950 this is not an arch. 00:07:02.600 --> 00:07:04.010 That's not an arch. 00:07:04.010 --> 00:07:05.780 I'm building a fence around my idea 00:07:05.780 --> 00:07:09.020 so that it can be distinguished from somebody else's idea. 00:07:09.020 --> 00:07:12.330 So in a more technical sense, I might say, well, 00:07:12.330 --> 00:07:13.990 my algorithm might similar-- 00:07:13.990 --> 00:07:15.740 might seem similar to Jones's algorithm, 00:07:15.740 --> 00:07:18.285 except his is exponential, and mine's linear. 00:07:18.285 --> 00:07:19.910 That's putting a fence around your idea 00:07:19.910 --> 00:07:22.998 so that people can not be confused about how it 00:07:22.998 --> 00:07:24.290 might relate to something else. 00:07:26.960 --> 00:07:30.230 The third thing on this list of samples 00:07:30.230 --> 00:07:33.440 is the idea of verbal punctuation. 00:07:44.780 --> 00:07:48.050 And the idea here is that, because people 00:07:48.050 --> 00:07:52.730 will occasionally fog out and need to get back on the bus, 00:07:52.730 --> 00:07:56.210 you need to provide some landmark places where 00:07:56.210 --> 00:08:00.260 you're announcing that it's a good time to get back on. 00:08:00.260 --> 00:08:02.480 So I might, in this talk, say something 00:08:02.480 --> 00:08:05.840 about this being my outline. 00:08:05.840 --> 00:08:09.030 The first thing we're going to do is talk about how to start. 00:08:09.030 --> 00:08:11.480 Then we're going to deal with these four samples, 00:08:11.480 --> 00:08:13.880 and among these four samples, I've 00:08:13.880 --> 00:08:16.550 talked about the first idea-- that's cycling. 00:08:16.550 --> 00:08:18.200 The second idea, building-- and now, 00:08:18.200 --> 00:08:22.040 the third idea is verbal punctuation. 00:08:22.040 --> 00:08:24.770 So I'm enumerating and providing numbers. 00:08:24.770 --> 00:08:28.040 I'm giving you a sense that there's a seam in the talk, 00:08:28.040 --> 00:08:29.360 and you can get back on. 00:08:33.299 --> 00:08:38.130 So now, we're on a roll, and since we're on a roll, 00:08:38.130 --> 00:08:42.270 can you guess what fourth idea might be here-- 00:08:42.270 --> 00:08:44.480 an idea that helps people get back on the bus? 00:08:48.800 --> 00:08:51.405 AUDIENCE: Ask a question. 00:08:51.405 --> 00:08:52.280 PATRICK WINSTON: Yes? 00:08:52.280 --> 00:08:53.322 AUDIENCE: Ask a question. 00:08:53.322 --> 00:08:53.860 [INAUDIBLE] 00:08:53.860 --> 00:08:55.570 PATRICK WINSTON: Ask a question, yes. 00:08:55.570 --> 00:08:58.220 Thank you. 00:08:58.220 --> 00:08:59.150 So ask a question. 00:09:05.420 --> 00:09:09.030 And so I will ask a question-- how much dead air can there be? 00:09:09.030 --> 00:09:11.010 How long can I pause? 00:09:11.010 --> 00:09:13.080 I counted seven seconds. 00:09:13.080 --> 00:09:16.300 It seemed like an eternity to me to wait and not say anything 00:09:16.300 --> 00:09:19.740 for seven seconds, but that's the standard amount of time 00:09:19.740 --> 00:09:20.910 you can wait for an answer. 00:09:20.910 --> 00:09:23.700 And of course, the question has to be carefully chosen. 00:09:23.700 --> 00:09:25.620 It can't be too obvious because then people 00:09:25.620 --> 00:09:28.410 will be embarrassed to say it, but the answers can't 00:09:28.410 --> 00:09:32.580 be too hard because then nobody will have anything to say. 00:09:32.580 --> 00:09:34.800 So here are some sample heuristics 00:09:34.800 --> 00:09:37.110 you can put in your armamentarium 00:09:37.110 --> 00:09:43.460 and build up your repertoire of ideas about presentation. 00:09:43.460 --> 00:09:47.340 And now, if this persuades you that there 00:09:47.340 --> 00:09:52.620 is something to know, that there is knowledge, 00:09:52.620 --> 00:09:55.500 then I've already succeeded because what I want to convince 00:09:55.500 --> 00:09:59.160 you of, is if you watch the speakers you admire and feel 00:09:59.160 --> 00:10:01.140 are effective, and ask yourselves 00:10:01.140 --> 00:10:03.030 why they're successful, then you can 00:10:03.030 --> 00:10:06.000 build up your own personal repertoire 00:10:06.000 --> 00:10:08.010 and develop your own personal style. 00:10:08.010 --> 00:10:10.830 And that's my fundamental objective, 00:10:10.830 --> 00:10:12.900 and the rest of this talk is about some 00:10:12.900 --> 00:10:15.180 of the things that are in my armamentarium 00:10:15.180 --> 00:10:17.550 that I think are effective. 00:10:17.550 --> 00:10:20.280 So next thing on our agenda, as we 00:10:20.280 --> 00:10:22.830 start to discuss these other things, 00:10:22.830 --> 00:10:25.170 is a discussion of time and place. 00:10:25.170 --> 00:10:27.420 So what do you think is a good time to have a lecture? 00:10:30.612 --> 00:10:31.660 11 AM? 00:10:31.660 --> 00:10:32.160 Yeah. 00:10:38.280 --> 00:10:44.670 And the reason is most people at MIT are awake by then, 00:10:44.670 --> 00:10:48.170 and hardly anyone has gone back to sleep. 00:10:48.170 --> 00:10:50.100 It's not right after a meal. 00:10:50.100 --> 00:10:52.560 People aren't fatigued from this or that. 00:10:52.560 --> 00:10:54.970 It's a great time to have a lecture. 00:10:54.970 --> 00:10:56.970 So that brings me, next, to the question of what 00:10:56.970 --> 00:10:58.546 about the place? 00:10:58.546 --> 00:11:01.440 And the most important thing about the place 00:11:01.440 --> 00:11:02.830 is that it be well lit. 00:11:09.320 --> 00:11:11.990 This room is well lit. 00:11:11.990 --> 00:11:16.370 Problem with other kinds of rooms is that we humans, 00:11:16.370 --> 00:11:18.740 whenever the lights go down, or whenever 00:11:18.740 --> 00:11:21.410 the room is dimly lighted, it signals 00:11:21.410 --> 00:11:23.350 that we should go to sleep. 00:11:23.350 --> 00:11:25.100 So whenever I go somewhere to give a talk, 00:11:25.100 --> 00:11:27.440 even today, the first thing I do when 00:11:27.440 --> 00:11:29.220 I speak to the audio-visual people 00:11:29.220 --> 00:11:31.240 is say, keep the lights full up. 00:11:34.400 --> 00:11:39.000 Oh, they might reply, people will see the slides better 00:11:39.000 --> 00:11:42.610 if we turn the lights off, and then I reply, 00:11:42.610 --> 00:11:44.985 it's extremely hard to see slides through closed eyelids. 00:11:50.350 --> 00:11:53.070 What else can you say about the place? 00:11:53.070 --> 00:11:58.710 Well, the place should be cased, and I 00:11:58.710 --> 00:12:01.680 mean that in a colloquial sense, of like if you're 00:12:01.680 --> 00:12:05.520 robbing a bank, you would go to the bank 00:12:05.520 --> 00:12:08.400 some occasions before to see what it's like, 00:12:08.400 --> 00:12:13.170 so there are no surprises when you do your robbery. 00:12:13.170 --> 00:12:15.750 So whenever I go somewhere to speak, 00:12:15.750 --> 00:12:18.600 the first thing I ask my host to do is to take me to the place 00:12:18.600 --> 00:12:22.320 where I'll be speaking so that if there are any weirdnesses, 00:12:22.320 --> 00:12:26.520 I'll be able to deal with it. 00:12:26.520 --> 00:12:29.010 Sometimes, it might require some intervention. 00:12:29.010 --> 00:12:31.800 Sometimes, it just might require me to understand 00:12:31.800 --> 00:12:33.660 what the challenges are. 00:12:33.660 --> 00:12:36.960 So when I came here this morning, 00:12:36.960 --> 00:12:39.203 I did what I typically do. 00:12:39.203 --> 00:12:40.620 I imagined that all the seats were 00:12:40.620 --> 00:12:44.340 filled with disinterested farm animals, 00:12:44.340 --> 00:12:46.830 and that way, I knew that, no matter how bad it was, 00:12:46.830 --> 00:12:48.120 it wouldn't be as bad as that. 00:12:51.460 --> 00:12:55.540 So finally, it should be reasonably-- 00:12:55.540 --> 00:12:57.460 it should be reasonably populated. 00:13:03.950 --> 00:13:07.340 It should be the case that-- 00:13:07.340 --> 00:13:09.370 if there were 10 people in this hall, 00:13:09.370 --> 00:13:11.050 everyone would be wondering, what's 00:13:11.050 --> 00:13:14.230 going on that's so much more interesting that nobody's here. 00:13:14.230 --> 00:13:17.055 So you want to get a right sized place that's-- 00:13:17.055 --> 00:13:18.430 doesn't have to be packed, but it 00:13:18.430 --> 00:13:20.950 has to be more than half full. 00:13:20.950 --> 00:13:24.550 So those are some thoughts about a time and place. 00:13:24.550 --> 00:13:27.640 Next thing I want to talk about is a subject 00:13:27.640 --> 00:13:30.385 of boards and props and slides. 00:13:38.230 --> 00:13:41.230 Well, these are the tools of the trade. 00:13:41.230 --> 00:13:49.420 I believe that this is the right tool for speaking 00:13:49.420 --> 00:13:52.330 when your purpose is informing. 00:13:52.330 --> 00:13:56.290 The slides are good when your purpose is exposing, 00:13:56.290 --> 00:14:00.610 but this is what I use when I'm informing, teaching, lecturing, 00:14:00.610 --> 00:14:02.440 and there's several reasons why I use it. 00:14:02.440 --> 00:14:04.480 For one thing, when you use the board, 00:14:04.480 --> 00:14:05.605 you have a graphic quality. 00:14:10.490 --> 00:14:14.440 It's the case that, when you have a board, then 00:14:14.440 --> 00:14:19.990 you can easily exploit the fact that you can use graphics 00:14:19.990 --> 00:14:22.668 in your presentation. 00:14:22.668 --> 00:14:25.210 So that's the graphic quality that I like, and the next thing 00:14:25.210 --> 00:14:26.755 I like is the speed property. 00:14:30.310 --> 00:14:32.440 The speed with which you write on the blackboard 00:14:32.440 --> 00:14:36.220 is approximately the speed at which people can absorb ideas. 00:14:36.220 --> 00:14:39.040 If you go flipping through a bunch of slides, 00:14:39.040 --> 00:14:40.210 nobody can go that fast. 00:14:44.030 --> 00:14:47.260 Finally, one great property of a board 00:14:47.260 --> 00:14:48.750 is that it can be a target. 00:14:53.830 --> 00:14:59.200 Many people who are novices at speaking 00:14:59.200 --> 00:15:04.000 find themselves suddenly aware of their hands. 00:15:04.000 --> 00:15:06.370 It's as if their hands were private parts that shouldn't 00:15:06.370 --> 00:15:10.820 be exposed in public, so right away, they go into the pockets, 00:15:10.820 --> 00:15:14.290 and this is considered insulting in some parts of the world. 00:15:14.290 --> 00:15:16.120 Or alternatively, maybe the hands 00:15:16.120 --> 00:15:19.690 will go in back like this. 00:15:19.690 --> 00:15:27.820 I was once in a convent in Serbia, and my host-- 00:15:27.820 --> 00:15:30.370 as soon as we entered, a nun came up to us 00:15:30.370 --> 00:15:32.260 and offered us a refreshment. 00:15:32.260 --> 00:15:33.980 And I was about to say, no, thank you, 00:15:33.980 --> 00:15:38.410 and he said, eat that stuff or die. 00:15:38.410 --> 00:15:42.370 It's a question of local custom and politeness. 00:15:42.370 --> 00:15:46.150 But then before anything happened there, 00:15:46.150 --> 00:15:49.360 the nun pulled my hands out like this 00:15:49.360 --> 00:15:52.330 because it was extraordinarily insulting in that culture 00:15:52.330 --> 00:15:54.880 to have your hands behind your back. 00:15:54.880 --> 00:15:56.080 So why is that? 00:15:56.080 --> 00:15:59.210 Well, it's usually supposed that that's 00:15:59.210 --> 00:16:02.170 that it has to do with whether you're concealing a weapon. 00:16:02.170 --> 00:16:05.860 So if your hands are in your pockets or behind your back, 00:16:05.860 --> 00:16:09.810 then it looks like you might have a weapon, 00:16:09.810 --> 00:16:12.010 and that's what I mean by the virtue-- 00:16:12.010 --> 00:16:13.583 one of these virtues of the board. 00:16:13.583 --> 00:16:15.500 Now, you have something to do with your hands. 00:16:15.500 --> 00:16:17.050 You can point out the stuff. 00:16:20.150 --> 00:16:22.310 I was once watching Seymour Papert give a lecture, 00:16:22.310 --> 00:16:24.110 and I thought it was terrific. 00:16:24.110 --> 00:16:25.850 So I went a second time-- 00:16:25.850 --> 00:16:28.170 first time to absorb the content, second time 00:16:28.170 --> 00:16:29.880 to note style. 00:16:29.880 --> 00:16:32.090 And what I discovered is that Papert was constantly 00:16:32.090 --> 00:16:33.568 pointing at the board. 00:16:33.568 --> 00:16:35.360 And then I thought about it a little while, 00:16:35.360 --> 00:16:38.638 and I noted that none of the stuff he was pointing to 00:16:38.638 --> 00:16:40.430 had anything to do with what he was saying. 00:16:43.190 --> 00:16:46.371 Nevertheless, it was an effective technique. 00:16:49.200 --> 00:16:52.070 So that's just a little bit about the virtue 00:16:52.070 --> 00:16:53.260 of blackboards. 00:16:53.260 --> 00:16:56.850 Now, I want to talk about props. 00:16:56.850 --> 00:16:59.820 The custodians of knowledge about props 00:16:59.820 --> 00:17:01.890 are the playwrights. 00:17:01.890 --> 00:17:05.730 Many decades ago, I saw a play by Henrik Ibsen. 00:17:05.730 --> 00:17:07.589 It was Hedda Gabler. 00:17:07.589 --> 00:17:11.670 I remember vaguely that it was about a woman in an unhappy 00:17:11.670 --> 00:17:16.349 marriage, and her husband was in competition for an academic job 00:17:16.349 --> 00:17:17.599 with somebody else. 00:17:17.599 --> 00:17:20.910 And he was going to lose partly because he was boring, 00:17:20.910 --> 00:17:23.220 and partly because the competitor had just 00:17:23.220 --> 00:17:25.650 written a magnificent book. 00:17:25.650 --> 00:17:27.150 By the way, this is back in the days 00:17:27.150 --> 00:17:30.710 before there were copying machines and computers. 00:17:30.710 --> 00:17:43.590 Anyhow, as the play opens, there's a potbellied stove, 00:17:43.590 --> 00:17:47.000 and in the beginning of the play, 00:17:47.000 --> 00:17:50.130 the potbelly stove, with its open door, 00:17:50.130 --> 00:17:54.330 just has some slightly glowing embers. 00:17:54.330 --> 00:17:57.000 But the potbellied stove is always there, 00:17:57.000 --> 00:17:59.640 and as tension mounts in the play, 00:17:59.640 --> 00:18:01.170 and you see this manuscript, this 00:18:01.170 --> 00:18:06.210 prop that Ibsen so artfully used, you just know 00:18:06.210 --> 00:18:08.520 that something's going to happen, 00:18:08.520 --> 00:18:13.890 because as the play goes on, the fire gets bigger and hotter 00:18:13.890 --> 00:18:15.750 and finally all consuming, and you just 00:18:15.750 --> 00:18:21.210 know that that manuscript is going to go into that fire. 00:18:21.210 --> 00:18:26.070 This memorable thing is what I remember about the play. 00:18:26.070 --> 00:18:29.590 So playwrights have got this all figured out, 00:18:29.590 --> 00:18:31.860 but on the other hand, they're not the only people 00:18:31.860 --> 00:18:34.380 who can use props. 00:18:34.380 --> 00:18:38.010 Here's an example of the use of a prop, also 00:18:38.010 --> 00:18:39.750 due to Seymour Papert. 00:18:39.750 --> 00:18:42.540 He was talking about how it's important to look 00:18:42.540 --> 00:18:45.260 at the problem in the right way, and here's 00:18:45.260 --> 00:18:50.015 an example that not only teaches that, but makes it possible 00:18:50.015 --> 00:18:51.390 for you to embarrass your friends 00:18:51.390 --> 00:18:53.190 in mechanical engineering. 00:18:53.190 --> 00:18:55.110 So here's what you do. 00:18:55.110 --> 00:18:58.140 Take a bicycle wheel, and you start it spinning. 00:18:58.140 --> 00:19:02.010 And then you put some torque on the axle, 00:19:02.010 --> 00:19:06.240 or equivalently, you blow on the edge. 00:19:06.240 --> 00:19:09.570 And the issue is, does it go that way, 00:19:09.570 --> 00:19:12.790 or does it go that way? 00:19:12.790 --> 00:19:16.590 Now, the mechanical engineers will immediately say, oh, yes, 00:19:16.590 --> 00:19:18.250 I see-- right hand screw wheel. 00:19:18.250 --> 00:19:20.970 And they'll put their fingers in this position, 00:19:20.970 --> 00:19:24.090 but forget exactly how to align their fingers 00:19:24.090 --> 00:19:27.870 with the various aspects of the problem. 00:19:27.870 --> 00:19:30.420 And so it's usually the case that they get it right 00:19:30.420 --> 00:19:34.260 with about a 50% probability. 00:19:34.260 --> 00:19:38.670 So their very fancy education gets them up 00:19:38.670 --> 00:19:43.060 to the point where they're equivalent to flipping a coin. 00:19:43.060 --> 00:19:45.720 But it doesn't have to be that way 00:19:45.720 --> 00:19:49.030 because you can think about the problem a little differently. 00:19:49.030 --> 00:19:50.980 So here's what you do. 00:19:50.980 --> 00:19:54.080 You take some duct tape, and you put it 00:19:54.080 --> 00:19:57.450 around the part of the wheel like that. 00:19:57.450 --> 00:20:00.250 And now, you start to think about, not the whole wheel, 00:20:00.250 --> 00:20:03.920 but just a little piece that's underneath the duct tape. 00:20:03.920 --> 00:20:06.720 So here, that piece comes rolling over the top, 00:20:06.720 --> 00:20:09.455 and at this point, you blow on it with a puff of air. 00:20:09.455 --> 00:20:11.080 Forgetting about the rest of the wheel, 00:20:11.080 --> 00:20:12.747 what happens to that little piece that's 00:20:12.747 --> 00:20:13.655 under the duct tape? 00:20:13.655 --> 00:20:15.280 It must want to go that way because you 00:20:15.280 --> 00:20:17.040 banged on it like that. 00:20:17.040 --> 00:20:19.420 It's already going down like that. 00:20:19.420 --> 00:20:20.910 And what about the next piece? 00:20:20.910 --> 00:20:21.830 Same thing. 00:20:21.830 --> 00:20:22.330 Next piece? 00:20:22.330 --> 00:20:23.200 Same thing. 00:20:23.200 --> 00:20:25.620 So the only thing that can happen 00:20:25.620 --> 00:20:28.090 is that the wheel goes over like that. 00:20:28.090 --> 00:20:30.370 And so now, you'll never wonder again 00:20:30.370 --> 00:20:33.000 because you're thinking about the problem in the right way, 00:20:33.000 --> 00:20:36.000 and it's demonstrated by the use of a prop. 00:20:38.703 --> 00:20:40.120 You can try this after we're done. 00:20:44.690 --> 00:20:47.980 Another example I like to remember 00:20:47.980 --> 00:20:50.880 is one from when I was taking 8.01. 00:20:50.880 --> 00:20:53.960 Alan Lazarus was the instructor at the time, 00:20:53.960 --> 00:20:57.220 and he was talking about the conservation of energy, kinetic 00:20:57.220 --> 00:20:59.450 and potential. 00:20:59.450 --> 00:21:04.420 And there was a long wire in a ceiling in 26-100 attached 00:21:04.420 --> 00:21:07.800 to a much bigger steel ball, but one-- 00:21:07.800 --> 00:21:09.270 not one like this. 00:21:09.270 --> 00:21:15.100 And Lazarus took the ball up against the wall like this. 00:21:15.100 --> 00:21:19.210 He put his head flat against the wall to steady himself, 00:21:19.210 --> 00:21:22.390 and then he let go, and the pendulum 00:21:22.390 --> 00:21:25.750 takes many seconds to go over and back, 00:21:25.750 --> 00:21:31.300 and then gently kisses Lazarus's nose. 00:21:31.300 --> 00:21:33.700 And so you have many seconds to think, 00:21:33.700 --> 00:21:36.550 this guy really believes in the conservation of energy. 00:21:43.270 --> 00:21:46.600 Do not try this at home. 00:21:46.600 --> 00:21:50.180 The problem is that, the first time you do this, 00:21:50.180 --> 00:21:51.820 you may not just let go. 00:21:51.820 --> 00:21:54.640 There's a natural human tendency to push. 00:22:01.510 --> 00:22:04.510 So that's a little bit on a subject of props. 00:22:24.612 --> 00:22:25.320 It's interesting. 00:22:25.320 --> 00:22:29.810 Whenever surveys are taken, students always say more chalk, 00:22:29.810 --> 00:22:31.800 less PowerPoint. 00:22:31.800 --> 00:22:34.230 And why would that be? 00:22:34.230 --> 00:22:37.080 Props are also very effective. 00:22:37.080 --> 00:22:39.420 Why would that be? 00:22:39.420 --> 00:22:42.870 I'll give you my lunatic fringe view on this. 00:22:42.870 --> 00:23:02.350 It has to do with what I would call empathetic mirroring. 00:23:02.350 --> 00:23:05.020 When you're sitting up there watching me write on the board, 00:23:05.020 --> 00:23:08.950 all those little mirror neurons in your head, I believe, 00:23:08.950 --> 00:23:11.560 become actuated, and you can feel yourself 00:23:11.560 --> 00:23:13.060 writing on the blackboard. 00:23:13.060 --> 00:23:18.560 And even more so, when I talk about this steel ball going 00:23:18.560 --> 00:23:22.270 that way and this way, you can feel the ball 00:23:22.270 --> 00:23:26.380 as if you were me, and you can't do that with a slide. 00:23:26.380 --> 00:23:28.190 You can't do it with a picture. 00:23:28.190 --> 00:23:31.820 You need to see it in the physical world. 00:23:31.820 --> 00:23:34.090 That's why I think that-- 00:23:34.090 --> 00:23:35.803 oh, yes, of course, it's-- 00:23:35.803 --> 00:23:37.470 there are speed questions involved, too, 00:23:37.470 --> 00:23:39.640 that have to be separated out. 00:23:39.640 --> 00:23:41.140 But I think the empathetic mirroring 00:23:41.140 --> 00:23:47.890 is why props and the use of a blackboard are so effective. 00:23:47.890 --> 00:23:53.990 Well, let's see-- oh, yes, there is one more thing 00:23:53.990 --> 00:23:57.100 by way of the tools, and that has 00:23:57.100 --> 00:23:59.500 to do with the use of slides. 00:24:02.260 --> 00:24:05.140 I repeat, I think they're for exposing ideas, 00:24:05.140 --> 00:24:08.440 not for teaching ideas, but that's what we do in a job talk 00:24:08.440 --> 00:24:11.230 or conference talk-- 00:24:11.230 --> 00:24:12.130 expose ideas. 00:24:12.130 --> 00:24:14.090 We don't teach them. 00:24:14.090 --> 00:24:16.840 So let me tell you a little bit about my views on that. 00:24:20.510 --> 00:24:29.060 I remember, once, I was in Terminal A at Logan Airport. 00:24:29.060 --> 00:24:33.240 I'd just come back from a really miserable conference, 00:24:33.240 --> 00:24:35.155 and the flight was really horrible. 00:24:35.155 --> 00:24:37.530 It was one of those that feels like an unbalanced washing 00:24:37.530 --> 00:24:39.095 machine. 00:24:39.095 --> 00:24:40.470 And for the only time in my life, 00:24:40.470 --> 00:24:46.620 I decided to stop on my way to my car and have a cup of coffee 00:24:46.620 --> 00:24:48.560 and relax a little bit. 00:24:48.560 --> 00:24:51.450 And as I was there for a few minutes, someone came up to me 00:24:51.450 --> 00:24:54.690 and said, are you Professor Winston? 00:24:54.690 --> 00:24:57.808 I think so, I said. 00:24:57.808 --> 00:24:58.350 I don't know. 00:24:58.350 --> 00:25:00.570 I guess I was trying to be funny. 00:25:00.570 --> 00:25:02.700 In any event, he said, I'm on my way to Europe 00:25:02.700 --> 00:25:04.320 to give a job talk. 00:25:04.320 --> 00:25:07.440 Would you mine critiquing my slides? 00:25:07.440 --> 00:25:08.610 Not at all, I said. 00:25:08.610 --> 00:25:12.750 You have too many, and they have too many words. 00:25:12.750 --> 00:25:15.280 How did you know, he said, thinking perhaps I 00:25:15.280 --> 00:25:17.790 had seen a talk of his before. 00:25:17.790 --> 00:25:19.800 I hadn't. 00:25:19.800 --> 00:25:22.770 My reply was, because it's always true. 00:25:22.770 --> 00:25:26.310 There are always too many slides, always too many words. 00:25:26.310 --> 00:25:29.725 So let me show you some extreme examples of how not to use 00:25:29.725 --> 00:25:30.225 slides. 00:25:34.110 --> 00:25:42.270 Well, for this demonstration, I need to be way over here 00:25:42.270 --> 00:25:48.510 and when I get over here, then I can start to say things like, 00:25:48.510 --> 00:25:51.342 one of the things you shouldn't do is read your transparencies. 00:25:51.342 --> 00:25:53.050 People in your audience know how to read, 00:25:53.050 --> 00:25:55.410 and reading will just annoy them. 00:25:55.410 --> 00:25:56.940 Also, you should be sure that you 00:25:56.940 --> 00:25:59.700 have only a few words on each transparency, 00:25:59.700 --> 00:26:02.160 and that the words are easy to read. 00:26:02.160 --> 00:26:05.310 And I hope I'm driving you crazy because I'm 00:26:05.310 --> 00:26:08.550 committing all kinds of crimes, the first of which 00:26:08.550 --> 00:26:12.540 is that there are too many words on the slide. 00:26:12.540 --> 00:26:14.630 Second of which is, I'm way over there, 00:26:14.630 --> 00:26:16.560 and the slide's way over there. 00:26:16.560 --> 00:26:20.070 So you get into this tennis match feeling 00:26:20.070 --> 00:26:23.700 of shifting back and forth between the slide 00:26:23.700 --> 00:26:24.600 and the speaker. 00:26:24.600 --> 00:26:26.790 You want the slides to be condiments to what 00:26:26.790 --> 00:26:29.730 you're saying, not the main event or the opposite way 00:26:29.730 --> 00:26:31.150 around. 00:26:31.150 --> 00:26:33.420 So how can we fix this? 00:26:33.420 --> 00:26:37.860 Step number one is to get rid of the background junk. 00:26:37.860 --> 00:26:40.560 That's always distraction. 00:26:40.560 --> 00:26:43.590 Step number two is to get rid of the words. 00:26:43.590 --> 00:26:46.320 When I reduced the words to these, 00:26:46.320 --> 00:26:50.210 then everything I read a previous time, 00:26:50.210 --> 00:26:53.270 I'm not licensed to say, because it's not on the slide. 00:26:53.270 --> 00:26:55.090 I'm not reading my slides anymore, 00:26:55.090 --> 00:26:58.370 but I'm saying what was written on the slides 00:26:58.370 --> 00:27:02.010 in a previous example. 00:27:02.010 --> 00:27:05.310 So what else can we do to simplify this? 00:27:05.310 --> 00:27:07.760 Well, we can get rid of the logos. 00:27:07.760 --> 00:27:10.750 We don't need them. 00:27:10.750 --> 00:27:13.030 Simplification. 00:27:13.030 --> 00:27:15.400 What else can we do? 00:27:15.400 --> 00:27:17.410 Get rid of the title. 00:27:17.410 --> 00:27:20.240 Now, I want to talk to you about some rules for slide 00:27:20.240 --> 00:27:21.250 preparation. 00:27:21.250 --> 00:27:22.840 I'm telling you the title. 00:27:22.840 --> 00:27:24.880 It doesn't have to be up there. 00:27:24.880 --> 00:27:27.370 By reducing the number of words on the slide, 00:27:27.370 --> 00:27:29.350 I'm allowing you to pay more attention to me 00:27:29.350 --> 00:27:32.295 and less to what's written on the slide. 00:27:32.295 --> 00:27:34.420 I mentioned it before-- we-- have only one language 00:27:34.420 --> 00:27:38.140 processor, and we can either use it to read stuff 00:27:38.140 --> 00:27:40.170 or to listen to the speaker. 00:27:40.170 --> 00:27:43.240 And so if we have too many words on the slide, 00:27:43.240 --> 00:27:45.700 it forces people in the audience to read this stuff 00:27:45.700 --> 00:27:46.330 and not listen. 00:27:49.270 --> 00:27:52.570 A student of mine did an experiment a few years ago. 00:27:52.570 --> 00:28:00.130 He taught some students some web-based programming ideas. 00:28:00.130 --> 00:28:04.580 Half the information was on slides, he said the other half, 00:28:04.580 --> 00:28:07.630 and then for a control group, he reversed it. 00:28:07.630 --> 00:28:10.960 And the question was, what did the subjects-- 00:28:10.960 --> 00:28:13.240 that is to say, freshmen at his fraternity-- 00:28:13.240 --> 00:28:18.040 what did the subjects remember best, what he said, 00:28:18.040 --> 00:28:21.260 or what they read on the slide? 00:28:21.260 --> 00:28:26.432 And the answer is, what they read on the slide. 00:28:26.432 --> 00:28:28.390 When their slides have a lot of material on it, 00:28:28.390 --> 00:28:30.110 they don't pay attention to the speaker. 00:28:30.110 --> 00:28:33.190 In fact, in the after action report, one of the subjects 00:28:33.190 --> 00:28:36.100 said, I wish you hadn't talked so much. 00:28:36.100 --> 00:28:37.060 It was distracting. 00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:44.120 Well, the last item is eliminate clutter. 00:28:44.120 --> 00:28:46.230 Here's some clutter. 00:28:46.230 --> 00:28:49.710 No reason even for those bullets. 00:28:49.710 --> 00:28:51.780 So the too many words problem is a consequence 00:28:51.780 --> 00:28:55.410 of a crime Microsoft has committed 00:28:55.410 --> 00:28:59.350 by allowing you to use fonts that are too small. 00:28:59.350 --> 00:29:03.570 So you should all have a sample slide like this 00:29:03.570 --> 00:29:06.240 that you can use to determine what the minimum font 00:29:06.240 --> 00:29:09.480 size is that's easily legible. 00:29:09.480 --> 00:29:14.745 [INAUDIBLE],, what do you think of those? 00:29:14.745 --> 00:29:16.212 AUDIENCE: Which size is right? 00:29:16.212 --> 00:29:17.190 PATRICK WINSTON: What's that? 00:29:17.190 --> 00:29:19.023 AUDIENCE: Did you ask me what size is right? 00:29:19.023 --> 00:29:21.560 PATRICK WINSTON: Yeah, minimum, maybe. 00:29:21.560 --> 00:29:22.770 AUDIENCE: 40 or 50. 00:29:22.770 --> 00:29:24.990 PATRICK WINSTON: Yeah, he says 40 or 50. 00:29:24.990 --> 00:29:27.050 I think that's about right. 00:29:27.050 --> 00:29:29.730 35 is beginning to get too small, not necessarily 00:29:29.730 --> 00:29:32.917 because you can't read it, but because you're probably 00:29:32.917 --> 00:29:34.750 using it to get too many words on the slide. 00:29:37.380 --> 00:29:39.940 What other crimes do we have? 00:29:39.940 --> 00:29:43.755 Well, we have the laser pointer crime. 00:29:43.755 --> 00:29:46.890 And for that-- in the old days, when 00:29:46.890 --> 00:29:49.120 we didn't have laser pointers, we used wooden ones, 00:29:49.120 --> 00:29:52.590 and people would go waving these things around. 00:29:52.590 --> 00:29:59.450 And pretty soon it became almost like a baton twirling contest, 00:29:59.450 --> 00:30:02.400 so here's what I recommended in the old days 00:30:02.400 --> 00:30:04.080 for dealing with this kind of pointer. 00:30:08.970 --> 00:30:10.530 This is an example of use of a prop. 00:30:14.070 --> 00:30:17.090 Jim Glass up there saw this talk about 20 years ago, 00:30:17.090 --> 00:30:19.380 and said, oh, yeah, I remember that talk. 00:30:19.380 --> 00:30:23.250 That's the one where you broke the pointer. 00:30:23.250 --> 00:30:25.200 It's amazing how props tend to be 00:30:25.200 --> 00:30:27.480 the things that are remembered. 00:30:27.480 --> 00:30:32.215 Well, now, we don't have physical pointers anymore. 00:30:32.215 --> 00:30:35.880 We've got laser pointers. 00:30:35.880 --> 00:30:39.090 It's a wonder more people aren't driven into epileptic fits 00:30:39.090 --> 00:30:41.190 over this sort of stuff. 00:30:41.190 --> 00:30:43.848 Well, here's what tends to happen. 00:30:43.848 --> 00:30:44.390 Look at that. 00:30:44.390 --> 00:30:49.170 It's a lovely recursive picture, and I can become part of it 00:30:49.170 --> 00:30:52.026 by putting that laser beam right on the back of my head 00:30:52.026 --> 00:30:52.526 up there. 00:30:56.100 --> 00:30:58.720 Then what do you see? 00:30:58.720 --> 00:31:01.440 You see the back of my head. 00:31:01.440 --> 00:31:04.830 I have no eye contact, no engagement, nothing. 00:31:04.830 --> 00:31:08.300 I was sitting with a student watching a talk one day, 00:31:08.300 --> 00:31:11.790 and she said, you know what, we could all leave, 00:31:11.790 --> 00:31:12.710 and he wouldn't know. 00:31:16.065 --> 00:31:17.940 So what happens when you use a laser pointer? 00:31:17.940 --> 00:31:21.090 You can't use a laser pointer without turning your head 00:31:21.090 --> 00:31:25.050 and pointing it at something, and when you do that, 00:31:25.050 --> 00:31:27.570 you lose contact with the audience. 00:31:27.570 --> 00:31:29.590 You don't want to do it. 00:31:29.590 --> 00:31:32.705 So what do you do if you need to identify something 00:31:32.705 --> 00:31:34.080 in your image, and you don't want 00:31:34.080 --> 00:31:35.280 to point at it with a laser? 00:31:35.280 --> 00:31:36.840 This is what you do. 00:31:36.840 --> 00:31:38.340 Put a little arrow on there and say, 00:31:38.340 --> 00:31:41.730 now, look at that guy at the end of arrow number one. 00:31:41.730 --> 00:31:43.730 You don't need to have laser pointer to do that. 00:31:48.933 --> 00:31:52.480 The too-heavy crime-- when people 00:31:52.480 --> 00:31:55.370 ask me to review a presentation, I 00:31:55.370 --> 00:31:57.940 ask them to print it out and lay it out on a table. 00:32:01.060 --> 00:32:04.450 When they do that, it's easy to see whether the talk is 00:32:04.450 --> 00:32:08.740 too heavy, too much text, not enough air, not 00:32:08.740 --> 00:32:12.950 enough white space, not enough imagery. 00:32:12.950 --> 00:32:16.540 This is a good example of such a talk-- 00:32:16.540 --> 00:32:19.300 way too heavy. 00:32:19.300 --> 00:32:22.982 The presenter has taken advantage of a small font sizes 00:32:22.982 --> 00:32:24.690 to get as much on the slide as he wanted. 00:32:27.600 --> 00:32:31.080 Lots of other crimes here, but the too-heavy-- the fact 00:32:31.080 --> 00:32:33.800 that it's too heavy is what I wanted to illustrate. 00:32:33.800 --> 00:32:36.750 So here, by contrast, another talk-- 00:32:36.750 --> 00:32:37.890 one I gave a few years ago. 00:32:37.890 --> 00:32:41.520 It's not-- it wasn't a deeply technical talk, 00:32:41.520 --> 00:32:46.800 but I show it to you because there's air in it. 00:32:46.800 --> 00:32:49.110 It's mostly pictures of things. 00:32:49.110 --> 00:32:52.930 There are three or four slides that have text on them, 00:32:52.930 --> 00:32:56.282 but when I come to those, I give the audience time to read them. 00:32:56.282 --> 00:32:57.990 And they're there because they might have 00:32:57.990 --> 00:33:00.613 some historical significance. 00:33:00.613 --> 00:33:02.280 The first slide with a lot of text on it 00:33:02.280 --> 00:33:06.120 is an extraction from the 1957-- 00:33:06.120 --> 00:33:10.830 from the proposal for the 1957 AI conference at Dartmouth. 00:33:10.830 --> 00:33:13.190 Extraordinarily interesting event, 00:33:13.190 --> 00:33:17.790 and that historical extraction from the proposal 00:33:17.790 --> 00:33:20.960 helps drive that point home. 00:33:20.960 --> 00:33:23.080 What else have we got here? 00:33:23.080 --> 00:33:25.680 Oh, yeah, your vocabulary word for the day. 00:33:25.680 --> 00:33:28.770 This is an hapax legomenon. 00:33:28.770 --> 00:33:31.170 What that means is, this is the kind of slide 00:33:31.170 --> 00:33:36.540 you can get away with exactly once in your presentation. 00:33:36.540 --> 00:33:38.910 This is a slide that got some currency some years 00:33:38.910 --> 00:33:43.500 ago because it shows the complexity of governing 00:33:43.500 --> 00:33:49.640 in Afghanistan by showing how impossibly complex it is. 00:33:49.640 --> 00:33:52.480 It's something you in the audience can't understand, 00:33:52.480 --> 00:33:55.920 and that's the point, but you can't have many of these. 00:33:55.920 --> 00:33:58.590 You can have one per work, one per presentation, 00:33:58.590 --> 00:34:00.780 one per paper, one per book. 00:34:00.780 --> 00:34:04.620 That's what hapax legomenon is, and this is an example of it. 00:34:06.725 --> 00:34:08.100 Well, I've shown you some crimes. 00:34:08.100 --> 00:34:12.739 So you might be asking, do these crimes actually occur? 00:34:12.739 --> 00:34:16.861 So they do. 00:34:16.861 --> 00:34:21.775 [LAUGHTER] 00:34:21.775 --> 00:34:23.400 There's the hands in the pockets crime. 00:34:26.540 --> 00:34:32.210 There's a crime and time and place selection here. 00:34:32.210 --> 00:34:35.837 This is how you get to the Bartos Theater. 00:34:35.837 --> 00:34:37.670 First thing you do is you get on these steps 00:34:37.670 --> 00:34:44.120 over at the Media Lab, then you cross this large open space, 00:34:44.120 --> 00:34:45.920 then you turn right down this corridor. 00:34:45.920 --> 00:34:47.201 [LAUGHTER] 00:34:47.201 --> 00:34:48.860 At this point, whenever I go in there, 00:34:48.860 --> 00:34:51.962 I wonder if there are torture implements around the corner. 00:34:51.962 --> 00:34:52.462 [LAUGHTER] 00:34:52.462 --> 00:34:54.530 And then when you get in there, you 00:34:54.530 --> 00:34:57.680 get into this dark, gloomy place. 00:34:57.680 --> 00:35:00.418 So it's well named when they call it the Bartos Theater 00:35:00.418 --> 00:35:02.460 because it's a place where you can watch a movie, 00:35:02.460 --> 00:35:04.418 but it's not a place where you can give a talk. 00:35:07.330 --> 00:35:10.700 Now, on a subject of does it happen, 00:35:10.700 --> 00:35:14.870 here's a talk I attended a while back in Stata. 00:35:14.870 --> 00:35:19.150 Notice that the speaker is far away from the slides. 00:35:19.150 --> 00:35:22.750 Speaker's using a laser pointer. 00:35:22.750 --> 00:35:26.110 And you say to me, well, what's happening here? 00:35:26.110 --> 00:35:29.500 It's, by the way, the 80th - 80th! 00:35:29.500 --> 00:35:31.460 slide of the presentation. 00:35:31.460 --> 00:35:33.320 Notice that it extends with the words, 00:35:33.320 --> 00:35:35.810 this is the first of 10 conclusions slides. 00:35:35.810 --> 00:35:37.960 [LAUGHTER] 00:35:37.960 --> 00:35:41.740 So what's the audience reaction? 00:35:41.740 --> 00:35:43.572 That's the sponsor of the meeting. 00:35:43.572 --> 00:35:44.840 [LAUGHTER] 00:35:44.840 --> 00:35:47.320 He's reading his email. 00:35:47.320 --> 00:35:50.240 This is the co-sponsor of the meeting. 00:35:50.240 --> 00:35:52.012 He's examining the lunch menu. 00:35:52.012 --> 00:35:54.552 [LAUGHTER] 00:35:54.552 --> 00:35:55.510 What about this person? 00:35:58.830 --> 00:36:02.250 This person looks like he's paying attention, 00:36:02.250 --> 00:36:04.863 but just because it's a still picture. 00:36:04.863 --> 00:36:06.780 If you were to see a video, what you would see 00:36:06.780 --> 00:36:10.555 is something like this [YAWNS]. 00:36:10.555 --> 00:36:14.350 [LAUGHTER] 00:36:14.350 --> 00:36:17.960 So yeah, it does happen. 00:36:17.960 --> 00:36:23.080 Well, now, that's a quick review of tools. 00:36:23.080 --> 00:36:27.700 Now, I want to talk about some special cases. 00:36:30.300 --> 00:36:32.830 We could talk a little bit about the informing 00:36:32.830 --> 00:36:38.010 or to say another way, doing what I'm doing now. 00:36:38.010 --> 00:36:40.360 But I'll just say a few words about that. 00:36:40.360 --> 00:36:42.340 In that kind of presentation, you 00:36:42.340 --> 00:36:46.870 want to start with a promise like I did for this hour 00:36:46.870 --> 00:36:48.255 that we're going through now. 00:36:48.255 --> 00:36:49.630 And then it comes to the question 00:36:49.630 --> 00:36:52.888 of how do you inspire people? 00:36:52.888 --> 00:36:54.430 I've given this talk for a long time, 00:36:54.430 --> 00:36:58.300 and a few years ago, our department chairman 00:36:58.300 --> 00:37:02.260 said, would you please give this talk to a new faculty, 00:37:02.260 --> 00:37:06.732 and be sure to emphasize what it takes to inspire students. 00:37:06.732 --> 00:37:09.190 And strangely, I hadn't thought about that question before. 00:37:09.190 --> 00:37:11.290 So I started a survey. 00:37:11.290 --> 00:37:14.490 I'd talked to some of my incoming freshmen advisees, 00:37:14.490 --> 00:37:17.290 and I talked to senior faculty and everything 00:37:17.290 --> 00:37:21.520 in between about how they've been inspired. 00:37:21.520 --> 00:37:23.963 What I found from the incoming freshmen 00:37:23.963 --> 00:37:26.380 is that they were inspired by some high school teacher who 00:37:26.380 --> 00:37:29.050 told them they could do it. 00:37:29.050 --> 00:37:32.140 What I found in the senior faculty, 00:37:32.140 --> 00:37:35.280 they were inspired by someone who 00:37:35.280 --> 00:37:38.310 helped them see a problem in a new way. 00:37:38.310 --> 00:37:44.050 And what I saw from everyone is that they were inspired when 00:37:44.050 --> 00:37:49.680 someone exhibited passion about what they were doing, 00:37:49.680 --> 00:37:52.920 exhibited passion about what they were doing. 00:37:52.920 --> 00:37:57.720 So that's one way to be inspiring. 00:37:57.720 --> 00:38:03.310 It's easy for me because I do artificial intelligence. 00:38:03.310 --> 00:38:06.030 And how can you not be interested 00:38:06.030 --> 00:38:07.230 in artificial intelligence? 00:38:07.230 --> 00:38:08.040 [LAUGHTER] 00:38:08.040 --> 00:38:10.842 I mean, if you're not interested in artificial intelligence, 00:38:10.842 --> 00:38:13.050 you're probably not interested in interesting things. 00:38:15.630 --> 00:38:20.640 So when I'm lecturing in my AI class, it's natural for me 00:38:20.640 --> 00:38:23.550 to talk about what I think is cool 00:38:23.550 --> 00:38:27.320 and how exciting some new idea is. 00:38:27.320 --> 00:38:31.080 So that's the kind of expression of passion 00:38:31.080 --> 00:38:34.950 that makes a difference while informing with respect 00:38:34.950 --> 00:38:37.080 to this question of inspiring. 00:38:39.960 --> 00:38:43.540 Oh, yeah and of course, during this promise phase, 00:38:43.540 --> 00:38:47.070 you can also express how cool stuff is. 00:38:47.070 --> 00:38:50.670 Let me give you an example of a lecture that starts this way. 00:38:50.670 --> 00:38:53.060 I'm talking about resource allocation. 00:38:53.060 --> 00:38:55.760 It's the same sort of stuff you would think of when your-- 00:38:55.760 --> 00:38:57.302 it's the same sort of ideas you would 00:38:57.302 --> 00:39:01.290 need if you're allocating aircraft to a flight schedule 00:39:01.290 --> 00:39:04.000 or trying to schedule a factory or something like that. 00:39:04.000 --> 00:39:06.060 But the example is putting colors 00:39:06.060 --> 00:39:08.760 on the states in the United States 00:39:08.760 --> 00:39:11.380 without any bordering states having the same color. 00:39:11.380 --> 00:39:12.050 So here it goes. 00:39:15.390 --> 00:39:18.600 This is what I show at the beginning of the class. 00:39:18.600 --> 00:39:21.520 This is a way of doing that coloring. 00:39:21.520 --> 00:39:25.440 And you might say, well, why don't we wait till it finishes? 00:39:25.440 --> 00:39:27.190 Would you like to do that? 00:39:27.190 --> 00:39:29.283 No? 00:39:29.283 --> 00:39:31.200 Well, we're not going to wait till it finishes 00:39:31.200 --> 00:39:33.990 because the sun will have exploded and consumed the earth 00:39:33.990 --> 00:39:35.430 before this program finishes. 00:39:35.430 --> 00:39:36.960 [LAUGHTER] 00:39:36.960 --> 00:39:41.520 But with a slight adjustment to how the program works, which 00:39:41.520 --> 00:39:44.070 I tell my students you will understand in the next 50 00:39:44.070 --> 00:39:45.660 minutes, this is what you get. 00:39:49.850 --> 00:39:50.630 Isn't that cool? 00:39:53.410 --> 00:39:55.160 You got to be amazed by stuff that 00:39:55.160 --> 00:39:57.830 takes a computation from longer than the lifetime 00:39:57.830 --> 00:40:00.920 of the solar system into a few seconds. 00:40:00.920 --> 00:40:05.757 So that's what I mean by providing a promise upfront 00:40:05.757 --> 00:40:07.340 and expressing some passion about what 00:40:07.340 --> 00:40:10.400 you're talking about. 00:40:10.400 --> 00:40:12.080 Well, the last item in this little block 00:40:12.080 --> 00:40:15.110 here is it has to do with what people 00:40:15.110 --> 00:40:16.640 think that they do it at MIT. 00:40:16.640 --> 00:40:19.880 You ask faculty what the most important purpose is, 00:40:19.880 --> 00:40:23.480 and they'll say, well, the most important thing I do 00:40:23.480 --> 00:40:26.060 is teach people how to think. 00:40:26.060 --> 00:40:29.090 And then you say oh, that's great. 00:40:29.090 --> 00:40:32.030 How do you teach people how to think? 00:40:32.030 --> 00:40:32.730 Blank stare. 00:40:35.250 --> 00:40:38.040 No one can quite respond to that part, 00:40:38.040 --> 00:40:40.693 that natural next question. 00:40:40.693 --> 00:40:42.360 So how do you teach people how to think? 00:40:42.360 --> 00:40:48.840 Well, I believe that we are storytelling animals. 00:40:48.840 --> 00:40:52.518 And that we start developing our story, 00:40:52.518 --> 00:40:54.060 understanding and manipulating skills 00:40:54.060 --> 00:40:57.810 with fairy tales in childhood and continue on 00:40:57.810 --> 00:41:02.490 through professional schools like law, business, medicine, 00:41:02.490 --> 00:41:03.870 everything. 00:41:03.870 --> 00:41:06.690 And we continue doing that throughout life. 00:41:06.690 --> 00:41:09.870 So if that is what thinking is all about. 00:41:09.870 --> 00:41:11.730 And we want to teach people how to think, 00:41:11.730 --> 00:41:14.490 you provide them with the stories they need to know, 00:41:14.490 --> 00:41:17.070 the questions they need to ask about those stories, 00:41:17.070 --> 00:41:19.350 mechanisms for analyzing those stories, 00:41:19.350 --> 00:41:20.890 ways of putting stories together, 00:41:20.890 --> 00:41:24.760 ways of evaluating how reliable a story is. 00:41:24.760 --> 00:41:28.080 And that's what I think you need to do when you teach people 00:41:28.080 --> 00:41:29.770 how to think. 00:41:29.770 --> 00:41:31.920 But that's all about education. 00:41:31.920 --> 00:41:35.790 And many of you here are not necessarily 00:41:35.790 --> 00:41:39.870 for that, but rather for this part, 00:41:39.870 --> 00:41:43.410 for persuading, which breaks down into several categories, 00:41:43.410 --> 00:41:48.210 oral exams, not shown, shop talks, getting famous. 00:41:48.210 --> 00:41:51.720 I won't say much about oral exams other than the fact 00:41:51.720 --> 00:41:54.930 that they used to be a lot scarier than they are today. 00:41:54.930 --> 00:41:59.280 In the old days, reading the literature 00:41:59.280 --> 00:42:01.410 in a foreign language was a part of that. 00:42:01.410 --> 00:42:04.350 And there was a high failure rate. 00:42:04.350 --> 00:42:08.790 And when you look back on those failures, 00:42:08.790 --> 00:42:12.540 the most usual reason for people failing an oral exam 00:42:12.540 --> 00:42:17.460 is failure to situate and a failure to practice. 00:42:17.460 --> 00:42:20.430 By situate, I mean, it's important to talk 00:42:20.430 --> 00:42:22.680 about your research in context. 00:42:22.680 --> 00:42:25.530 This is a problem that's being pursued all over the world. 00:42:25.530 --> 00:42:30.450 There hasn't been any progress before me in the past 30 years. 00:42:30.450 --> 00:42:32.160 Everyone is looking for a solution 00:42:32.160 --> 00:42:33.840 because it will have impact on so 00:42:33.840 --> 00:42:37.380 many other things, such situating and time and place 00:42:37.380 --> 00:42:38.860 and feel. 00:42:38.860 --> 00:42:41.970 And then as far as practice is concerned, yes, 00:42:41.970 --> 00:42:43.530 practice is important. 00:42:43.530 --> 00:42:48.090 But that doesn't mean showing your slides to the people 00:42:48.090 --> 00:42:50.370 you share an with. 00:42:50.370 --> 00:42:54.023 The problem with that is that if people know what you're doing, 00:42:54.023 --> 00:42:55.440 they will hallucinate that there's 00:42:55.440 --> 00:42:57.480 material in your presentation that isn't there 00:42:57.480 --> 00:42:59.748 if it isn't there. 00:42:59.748 --> 00:43:01.290 A variation on the scene, by the way, 00:43:01.290 --> 00:43:06.330 is your faculty supervisor is not a very good person 00:43:06.330 --> 00:43:09.300 to help you debug a talk because they, in fact, know 00:43:09.300 --> 00:43:10.200 what you're doing. 00:43:10.200 --> 00:43:11.940 And they will, in fact, hallucinate 00:43:11.940 --> 00:43:14.818 there's material in your presentation that isn't there. 00:43:14.818 --> 00:43:16.860 So you need to get together with some friends who 00:43:16.860 --> 00:43:20.180 don't know what you're doing and have them-- 00:43:20.180 --> 00:43:23.760 well, you start the practice session by saying, 00:43:23.760 --> 00:43:27.330 if you can't make me cry, I won't value as a friend 00:43:27.330 --> 00:43:27.840 anymore. 00:43:27.840 --> 00:43:28.980 [LAUGHTER] 00:43:28.980 --> 00:43:33.600 And then when you get to the faculty on a oral exam, 00:43:33.600 --> 00:43:35.350 it will be easy. 00:43:35.350 --> 00:43:39.000 You see, difficulty-- the amount of flak 00:43:39.000 --> 00:43:41.990 you'll get from somebody is proportional to age. 00:43:41.990 --> 00:43:45.390 The older somebody is, the more they 00:43:45.390 --> 00:43:47.160 understand where they are in the world. 00:43:47.160 --> 00:43:49.470 But the young people are trying to show the old people 00:43:49.470 --> 00:43:52.122 how smart they are, so it's subtly vicious. 00:43:52.122 --> 00:43:53.580 So whenever you have an opportunity 00:43:53.580 --> 00:43:55.140 to have an examining committee that's 00:43:55.140 --> 00:43:59.490 full of people with gray hair, that's what you want. 00:43:59.490 --> 00:44:01.500 Well, that's just a word or two about something 00:44:01.500 --> 00:44:02.460 I haven't listed here. 00:44:02.460 --> 00:44:05.610 Let's get into the subject of job talks. 00:44:05.610 --> 00:44:14.230 So I was sitting in a bar many years ago in San Diego. 00:44:14.230 --> 00:44:16.680 I was a member of the Navy Science Board, 00:44:16.680 --> 00:44:21.420 and I was sitting with a couple of my colleagues on the board 00:44:21.420 --> 00:44:24.910 Delores Etter from the University of Colorado. 00:44:24.910 --> 00:44:27.960 She made me so jealous I could spit because she'd written 21 00:44:27.960 --> 00:44:30.660 books, and I'd only written 17. 00:44:30.660 --> 00:44:35.130 And then the other one was Bill Weldon 00:44:35.130 --> 00:44:38.230 from the University of Texas. 00:44:38.230 --> 00:44:41.280 He was an electromagnetism guy, and he 00:44:41.280 --> 00:44:45.030 knew how to use rail guns to drive steel rods through tank 00:44:45.030 --> 00:44:45.660 armor. 00:44:45.660 --> 00:44:47.590 These were interesting people. 00:44:47.590 --> 00:44:53.880 So I said, what do you look for in a faculty candidate? 00:44:53.880 --> 00:44:58.000 And within one microsecond, Delores 00:44:58.000 --> 00:45:00.270 said, they have to show us they've 00:45:00.270 --> 00:45:05.940 got some kind of vision, quickly followed by Bill who said, 00:45:05.940 --> 00:45:08.063 they have to show us that they've done something. 00:45:15.160 --> 00:45:18.550 Oh, that sounds good, I said. 00:45:18.550 --> 00:45:20.560 And then I said to them, how long 00:45:20.560 --> 00:45:24.640 does a candidate have to establish these two things? 00:45:24.640 --> 00:45:26.850 What do you think? 00:45:26.850 --> 00:45:28.510 Well, compare your answer to theirs. 00:45:33.970 --> 00:45:36.803 Five minutes. 00:45:36.803 --> 00:45:38.470 So if you haven't expressed your vision, 00:45:38.470 --> 00:45:42.850 if you haven't told people that you've done something in five 00:45:42.850 --> 00:45:45.880 minutes, you've already lost. 00:45:45.880 --> 00:45:47.630 So you have to be able to do that. 00:45:47.630 --> 00:45:51.250 And let me just mention a couple of things in that connection. 00:45:51.250 --> 00:45:54.190 Here, the vision is in part, a problem 00:45:54.190 --> 00:46:00.340 that somebody cares about and something new in your approach. 00:46:06.350 --> 00:46:08.560 So the problem is understanding the nature 00:46:08.560 --> 00:46:10.480 of human intelligence. 00:46:10.480 --> 00:46:12.640 And the approach is asking questions 00:46:12.640 --> 00:46:16.510 about what makes us different from chimpanzees 00:46:16.510 --> 00:46:18.130 and Neanderthals. 00:46:18.130 --> 00:46:19.720 Is it merely a matter of quantity, 00:46:19.720 --> 00:46:23.320 or we're just a little bit smarter in some continuous way? 00:46:23.320 --> 00:46:26.490 Or do we have something that's fundamentally different 00:46:26.490 --> 00:46:30.550 that chimpanzees don't have and Neanderthals either? 00:46:30.550 --> 00:46:34.630 And the answer is yes, we do have something different. 00:46:34.630 --> 00:46:36.900 We are symbolic creatures. 00:46:36.900 --> 00:46:39.550 And because we're symbolic creatures, 00:46:39.550 --> 00:46:44.560 we can build symbolic descriptions 00:46:44.560 --> 00:46:46.330 of relations and events. 00:46:46.330 --> 00:46:48.835 We can string them together and make stories. 00:46:48.835 --> 00:46:51.760 And because we can make stories, that's what makes us different. 00:46:51.760 --> 00:46:54.190 So that's my stump speech. 00:46:54.190 --> 00:46:56.560 That's how I start most of my talks 00:46:56.560 --> 00:46:59.260 on my own personal research. 00:46:59.260 --> 00:47:04.990 How do you express the notion that you've done something? 00:47:04.990 --> 00:47:10.240 By listing the steps that need to be taken in order to achieve 00:47:10.240 --> 00:47:12.602 the solution to that problem. 00:47:12.602 --> 00:47:14.560 You don't have to have done all of those steps. 00:47:14.560 --> 00:47:18.370 But you can say here's what needs to be done. 00:47:18.370 --> 00:47:20.660 An example, here's what needs to be done. 00:47:20.660 --> 00:47:23.260 We need to specify some behavior. 00:47:23.260 --> 00:47:25.840 We need to enumerate the constraints that 00:47:25.840 --> 00:47:28.690 make it possible to deal with that behavior. 00:47:28.690 --> 00:47:31.030 We have to implement a system because we're engineers, 00:47:31.030 --> 00:47:33.190 and we don't think that we've understood something 00:47:33.190 --> 00:47:35.333 unless we can build it. 00:47:35.333 --> 00:47:37.000 And we've built such a system, and we're 00:47:37.000 --> 00:47:38.542 about to demonstrate it to you today. 00:47:38.542 --> 00:47:42.040 That would be an example of enumerating a series of steps 00:47:42.040 --> 00:47:45.290 needed to realize the vision. 00:47:45.290 --> 00:47:49.280 So then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 00:47:49.280 --> 00:47:51.250 And then you conclude by-- 00:47:51.250 --> 00:47:54.550 you conclude by enumerating your contributions. 00:48:01.110 --> 00:48:03.930 It's kind of mirror of these steps. 00:48:03.930 --> 00:48:06.610 And it helps to establish that you've done something. 00:48:06.610 --> 00:48:08.730 So that's a kind of general purpose framework 00:48:08.730 --> 00:48:12.180 for doing a technical talk. 00:48:12.180 --> 00:48:16.930 Now, only a few more things left to do today. 00:48:16.930 --> 00:48:19.360 Getting famous is the next item on our agenda 00:48:19.360 --> 00:48:20.920 because once you've got the job, you 00:48:20.920 --> 00:48:22.420 need to think a little bit about how 00:48:22.420 --> 00:48:25.790 you're going to be recognized for what you do. 00:48:25.790 --> 00:48:38.140 So oh, first of all, why should you care about getting famous? 00:48:38.140 --> 00:48:40.360 I thought about this in connection 00:48:40.360 --> 00:48:44.920 with a fundraising event I attended 00:48:44.920 --> 00:48:49.920 once, a fundraising event for raising money 00:48:49.920 --> 00:48:52.680 to save Venice from going under water and having all of its art 00:48:52.680 --> 00:48:53.820 destroyed. 00:48:53.820 --> 00:49:00.210 Anyway, I was sitting here, and JC was sitting here. 00:49:00.210 --> 00:49:03.210 That was Julia, the late Julia Child. 00:49:08.190 --> 00:49:10.950 And as the evening wore on, more and more people 00:49:10.950 --> 00:49:14.760 would come up and ask Julia to autograph something 00:49:14.760 --> 00:49:19.590 or express a feeling that she had changed their life. 00:49:19.590 --> 00:49:23.380 And it just happened over and over again. 00:49:23.380 --> 00:49:27.810 So eventually, I turned to Julia, and I said, Ms. Child, 00:49:27.810 --> 00:49:30.157 is it fun to be famous? 00:49:30.157 --> 00:49:31.740 And she thought about it for a second. 00:49:31.740 --> 00:49:34.752 And she said, you get used to it. 00:49:34.752 --> 00:49:35.900 [LAUGHTER] 00:49:35.900 --> 00:49:38.070 But you know what occured to me? 00:49:38.070 --> 00:49:41.590 You never get used to being ignored. 00:49:41.590 --> 00:49:45.240 So it's-- here's a way to think about it. 00:49:45.240 --> 00:49:47.100 Your ideas are like your children. 00:49:47.100 --> 00:49:50.370 And you don't want them to go into the world in rags. 00:49:50.370 --> 00:49:51.870 So what you want to do is to be sure 00:49:51.870 --> 00:49:55.390 that you have these techniques, these mechanisms, 00:49:55.390 --> 00:49:58.470 these thoughts about how to present ideas that you have so 00:49:58.470 --> 00:50:02.280 that they're recognized for the value that is in them. 00:50:02.280 --> 00:50:05.370 So that's why it's a legitimate thing to concern yourself 00:50:05.370 --> 00:50:08.010 with packaging. 00:50:08.010 --> 00:50:11.070 Now, how do you get remembered? 00:50:11.070 --> 00:50:14.720 Well, there's something I like to call Winston's star. 00:50:14.720 --> 00:50:20.130 And every one of the items I'm about to articulate starts 00:50:20.130 --> 00:50:24.510 with an S. So if you want your presentation ideas 00:50:24.510 --> 00:50:27.240 to be remembered, one of the things you need to do 00:50:27.240 --> 00:50:32.820 is to make sure that you have some kind of symbol associated 00:50:32.820 --> 00:50:34.590 with your work. 00:50:34.590 --> 00:50:37.980 So this arch example is actually from my PhD thesis 00:50:37.980 --> 00:50:39.780 many, many years ago. 00:50:39.780 --> 00:50:45.000 And in the course of my work at that time, 00:50:45.000 --> 00:50:47.820 this work on arch learning became mildly famous, 00:50:47.820 --> 00:50:49.770 and I didn't know why. 00:50:49.770 --> 00:50:51.630 It was only many years later that I realized 00:50:51.630 --> 00:50:54.660 that that work accidentally had all of the elements 00:50:54.660 --> 00:50:56.220 on this star. 00:50:56.220 --> 00:50:59.910 So the first element is that there was a kind of symbol. 00:50:59.910 --> 00:51:00.900 It's the arch itself. 00:51:05.510 --> 00:51:10.480 Next thing you need is some kind of slogan, 00:51:10.480 --> 00:51:13.740 a kind of phrase that provides a handle on the work. 00:51:13.740 --> 00:51:17.160 And in this case, the phrase was one shot learning. 00:51:20.120 --> 00:51:23.340 And it was one shot because the program I wrote 00:51:23.340 --> 00:51:27.030 learned something definite from every example that 00:51:27.030 --> 00:51:28.860 was presented to us. 00:51:28.860 --> 00:51:32.970 So in going from a model based on this configuration 00:51:32.970 --> 00:51:35.940 to something that isn't an arch base on that configuration, 00:51:35.940 --> 00:51:38.640 the program learned that it has to be on top, 00:51:38.640 --> 00:51:41.490 one shot learning. 00:51:41.490 --> 00:51:45.210 So that's a symbol, slogan. 00:51:45.210 --> 00:51:46.575 And now we need a surprise. 00:51:51.330 --> 00:51:54.290 Yeah, the surprise is you don't need a million examples 00:51:54.290 --> 00:51:55.910 of something to learn. 00:51:55.910 --> 00:51:58.010 You can do it with one example if you're 00:51:58.010 --> 00:52:02.180 smart enough to make use of that example appropriately. 00:52:02.180 --> 00:52:03.230 So that was the surprise. 00:52:03.230 --> 00:52:07.160 You can learn something definite from each example. 00:52:07.160 --> 00:52:08.840 Next item was a salient idea. 00:52:13.280 --> 00:52:16.785 Now, when I say salient idea, I don't mean important. 00:52:16.785 --> 00:52:18.410 What I mean is an idea that sticks out. 00:52:21.260 --> 00:52:24.080 Some theses, funnily enough, have too many good ideas, 00:52:24.080 --> 00:52:27.110 and you don't know what it's all about because which one is it? 00:52:27.110 --> 00:52:29.290 So you need an idea that sticks out. 00:52:29.290 --> 00:52:33.890 And the idea that stuck out here was the notion of a near miss. 00:52:39.280 --> 00:52:43.650 You see, this is not an arch, but it doesn't miss by much. 00:52:43.650 --> 00:52:45.490 So it's a near miss. 00:52:45.490 --> 00:52:50.920 And finally, you need to tell the story 00:52:50.920 --> 00:52:56.160 of how you did it, how it works, why it's important. 00:52:56.160 --> 00:53:01.720 So that's a bit on how to not so much get famous, 00:53:01.720 --> 00:53:06.240 but how to ensure that your work is recognized. 00:53:06.240 --> 00:53:08.890 Well, we're almost finished because now we're 00:53:08.890 --> 00:53:13.470 down to this last item, which is how to stop. 00:53:13.470 --> 00:53:14.998 And when we come to that, there's 00:53:14.998 --> 00:53:17.290 a question of all right, well, what is the final slide? 00:53:22.412 --> 00:53:23.620 And what are the final words? 00:53:30.610 --> 00:53:32.830 So for the final slide, let me give you 00:53:32.830 --> 00:53:34.750 some examples of possibilities. 00:53:37.588 --> 00:53:38.380 How about this one? 00:53:42.150 --> 00:53:50.610 Well, you might see that slide and think to yourself, 00:53:50.610 --> 00:53:53.730 there are 1,000 faculty at MIT. 00:53:53.730 --> 00:53:55.770 Nice piece of work, but not so much, 00:53:55.770 --> 00:54:01.050 but it's only a tiny piece of work if you divide by 1,000. 00:54:01.050 --> 00:54:03.810 So when you show a whole gigantic list of collaborators 00:54:03.810 --> 00:54:07.380 at the end of a talk, it's a kind of let down 00:54:07.380 --> 00:54:09.150 because it suggests that nobody knows. 00:54:09.150 --> 00:54:12.650 Well, did you do anything significant? 00:54:12.650 --> 00:54:15.180 Now, you've got to recognize your collaborators, right? 00:54:15.180 --> 00:54:16.970 So where do you do that? 00:54:16.970 --> 00:54:19.877 Not on the last slide, on the first slide. 00:54:19.877 --> 00:54:21.210 All this was on the first slide. 00:54:21.210 --> 00:54:23.263 These are the collaborators, so you don't 00:54:23.263 --> 00:54:24.430 want to put them at the end. 00:54:24.430 --> 00:54:25.805 You don't want a slide like this. 00:54:28.290 --> 00:54:31.060 How about this one? 00:54:31.060 --> 00:54:33.050 This is the worst possible way to end a talk. 00:54:33.050 --> 00:54:34.700 [LAUGHTER] 00:54:34.700 --> 00:54:39.410 Because this slide can be up there for 20 minutes. 00:54:39.410 --> 00:54:40.660 I've seen it happen. 00:54:40.660 --> 00:54:43.820 It squanders real estate. 00:54:43.820 --> 00:54:47.420 It squanders an opportunity to tell people who you are. 00:54:47.420 --> 00:54:48.200 It's just-- 00:54:51.777 --> 00:54:52.610 What about this one? 00:54:56.780 --> 00:54:57.800 I often see it. 00:54:57.800 --> 00:55:01.300 I never see anybody write it down. 00:55:01.300 --> 00:55:03.991 Also, it wastes opportunity. 00:55:06.580 --> 00:55:11.440 Oh my God, even worse. 00:55:14.970 --> 00:55:18.180 All of these lines do nothing for you. 00:55:18.180 --> 00:55:21.840 They waste an opportunity for you to tell people-- 00:55:21.840 --> 00:55:23.730 to leave people with what you-- 00:55:23.730 --> 00:55:26.360 with who you are. 00:55:26.360 --> 00:55:29.000 Well, what about this? 00:55:29.000 --> 00:55:31.450 Is this a good one? 00:55:31.450 --> 00:55:34.660 It might seem so at first, but here's the problem. 00:55:38.340 --> 00:55:41.040 If you say these are my conclusions, 00:55:41.040 --> 00:55:42.960 these are perfectly legitimate conclusions 00:55:42.960 --> 00:55:44.910 that nobody cares about. 00:55:44.910 --> 00:55:47.557 What they care about is what you have done. 00:55:47.557 --> 00:55:49.140 And that's why your final slide should 00:55:49.140 --> 00:55:53.460 have this label, contributions. 00:55:53.460 --> 00:55:56.510 It's a mirror of what I said over there about how job talks 00:55:56.510 --> 00:55:57.830 ought to be like a sandwich. 00:55:57.830 --> 00:55:59.460 And the final slide, the one that's 00:55:59.460 --> 00:56:02.240 up there while people are asking questions and filing out, 00:56:02.240 --> 00:56:05.470 it ought to be the one that has your contributions on it. 00:56:05.470 --> 00:56:09.140 Here's an example from my own stump speech. 00:56:09.140 --> 00:56:13.020 Yeah, this is what I talk about a lot. 00:56:13.020 --> 00:56:16.912 Yes, here are the things that I typically demonstrate. 00:56:21.160 --> 00:56:23.146 And I wait for people to read it. 00:56:23.146 --> 00:56:27.616 And the final element there is this is what we get out of it, 00:56:27.616 --> 00:56:32.780 so that's an example of a contribution slide. 00:56:32.780 --> 00:56:37.670 All right, now, what about the other part? 00:56:37.670 --> 00:56:39.740 You got your final slide up there. 00:56:39.740 --> 00:56:41.150 It's a contribution slide. 00:56:41.150 --> 00:56:44.430 Somehow you have to tell people you're finished. 00:56:44.430 --> 00:56:47.551 So let's see it, check out a few possibilities. 00:56:50.140 --> 00:56:54.700 One thing you could do in the final words 00:56:54.700 --> 00:56:56.000 is you could tell a joke. 00:56:59.840 --> 00:57:02.232 It's OK. 00:57:02.232 --> 00:57:04.565 By the time you're done, people have adjusted themselves 00:57:04.565 --> 00:57:05.728 to your voice parameters. 00:57:05.728 --> 00:57:06.770 They're ready for a joke. 00:57:10.040 --> 00:57:13.010 I was sitting in another bar, this time in Austin, Texas 00:57:13.010 --> 00:57:16.310 with a colleague of mine named Doug Lenat. 00:57:16.310 --> 00:57:18.880 And Doug's a fantastic speaker. 00:57:18.880 --> 00:57:21.920 And so I said to Doug, Doug, you're 00:57:21.920 --> 00:57:24.860 a fantastic speaker, what's your secret? 00:57:24.860 --> 00:57:29.440 And he said, oh, I always finish with a joke, 00:57:29.440 --> 00:57:32.120 and that way, people think they've had fun the whole time. 00:57:32.120 --> 00:57:35.480 [LAUGHTER] 00:57:35.480 --> 00:57:39.540 So yeah, a joke will work down there. 00:57:39.540 --> 00:57:40.580 How about this one? 00:57:50.770 --> 00:57:51.270 Thank you. 00:57:54.030 --> 00:57:55.650 I don't recommend it. 00:57:55.650 --> 00:57:58.410 It's a weak move. 00:57:58.410 --> 00:58:00.330 You will not go to hell if you conclude 00:58:00.330 --> 00:58:02.730 your talk by saying thank you, but it's a weak move, 00:58:02.730 --> 00:58:04.880 and here's why. 00:58:04.880 --> 00:58:08.460 When you say thank you, even worse, thank you for listening, 00:58:08.460 --> 00:58:10.350 it suggests that everybody has stayed 00:58:10.350 --> 00:58:14.310 that long out of politeness and that they had a profound desire 00:58:14.310 --> 00:58:15.632 to be somewhere else. 00:58:15.632 --> 00:58:17.340 But they're so polite, they stuck it out. 00:58:17.340 --> 00:58:20.430 And that's what you're thanking them for. 00:58:20.430 --> 00:58:21.990 So once wild applause has started, 00:58:21.990 --> 00:58:24.240 you can mouth a thank you, and there's 00:58:24.240 --> 00:58:25.380 nothing wrong with that. 00:58:25.380 --> 00:58:29.992 But the last thing you do should not be saying thank you. 00:58:29.992 --> 00:58:31.950 Now, you say to me, well, doesn't everybody say 00:58:31.950 --> 00:58:33.570 thank you? 00:58:33.570 --> 00:58:37.800 Well, what everybody does is not necessarily the right thing. 00:58:37.800 --> 00:58:40.110 And I like to illustrate how some talks can 00:58:40.110 --> 00:58:41.580 end without saying thank you. 00:58:41.580 --> 00:58:45.210 I like to draw from political speeches, 00:58:45.210 --> 00:58:47.956 but the ones that I've heard recently aren't so good, so-- 00:58:47.956 --> 00:58:50.240 [LAUGHTER] 00:58:50.240 --> 00:58:55.500 So I'm going to have to go go back a little bit. 00:58:55.500 --> 00:58:57.010 So here is Governor Christie. 00:58:57.010 --> 00:59:03.680 He gave the Republican keynote address one year. 00:59:03.680 --> 00:59:05.040 This is the end of his talk. 00:59:05.040 --> 00:59:07.214 Let's see what he does. 00:59:07.214 --> 00:59:08.966 [APPLAUSE] 00:59:08.966 --> 00:59:11.920 CHRIS CHRISTIE: And together, everybody, together. 00:59:11.920 --> 00:59:16.060 We will stand up once again for American greatness 00:59:16.060 --> 00:59:18.190 for our children and grandchildren. 00:59:18.190 --> 00:59:20.583 God bless you, and God bless America. 00:59:20.583 --> 00:59:23.241 [APPLAUSE] 00:59:23.241 --> 00:59:27.260 PATRICK WINSTON: So that's a classic benediction ending. 00:59:27.260 --> 00:59:30.620 God bless you, God bless America. 00:59:30.620 --> 00:59:32.610 Now, I don't want to be partisan about this. 00:59:32.610 --> 00:59:35.570 So I think I'd better switch to the keynote address 00:59:35.570 --> 00:59:38.840 in the Democratic Convention. 00:59:38.840 --> 00:59:42.050 It was delivered that year by Bill Clinton, who knows 00:59:42.050 --> 00:59:45.010 something about how to speak. 00:59:45.010 --> 00:59:46.380 [APPLAUSE] 00:59:46.380 --> 00:59:48.940 BILL CLINTON: If that is what you want, 00:59:48.940 --> 00:59:52.300 if that is what you believe, you must vote, 00:59:52.300 --> 00:59:57.046 and you must re-elect President Barack Obama. 00:59:57.046 --> 00:59:58.588 God bless you, and God bless America. 00:59:58.588 --> 01:00:00.061 [APPLAUSE] 01:00:00.061 --> 01:00:03.989 [LAUGHTER] 01:00:09.390 --> 01:00:11.410 PATRICK WINSTON: Now, watch this. 01:00:11.410 --> 01:00:13.297 Let's go back a little bit and redo it. 01:00:13.297 --> 01:00:15.130 What I want you to see is that at one point, 01:00:15.130 --> 01:00:18.430 he seems to be almost pressing his lips together, forcing 01:00:18.430 --> 01:00:20.315 himself not to say thank you. 01:00:20.315 --> 01:00:22.690 Then there's another place where he does a little salute. 01:00:22.690 --> 01:00:24.784 So watch for those this time around. 01:00:24.784 --> 01:00:25.650 [APPLAUSE] 01:00:25.650 --> 01:00:28.210 BILL CLINTON: If that is what you want, 01:00:28.210 --> 01:00:31.470 if that is what you believe, you must vote, 01:00:31.470 --> 01:00:36.310 and you must re-elect President Barack Obama. 01:00:36.310 --> 01:00:38.470 God bless you., and God bless America. 01:00:38.470 --> 01:00:39.625 [APPLAUSE] 01:00:39.625 --> 01:00:42.208 PATRICK WINSTON: That's where he's pursing his lips. 01:00:42.208 --> 01:00:43.186 [LAUGHTER] 01:00:43.186 --> 01:00:45.142 There's the salute. 01:00:45.142 --> 01:00:49.455 [LAUGHTER] 01:00:49.455 --> 01:00:50.830 Yeah, I think that's pretty good. 01:00:50.830 --> 01:00:52.640 Now, what are we gonna take away from this? 01:00:52.640 --> 01:00:57.910 Well, I suppose I could conclude this talk by saying God bless 01:00:57.910 --> 01:01:00.960 you, and God bless the Massachusetts Institute 01:01:00.960 --> 01:01:04.732 of Technology, but it might not work so well. 01:01:04.732 --> 01:01:06.190 But what you can get out of this is 01:01:06.190 --> 01:01:08.110 you don't have to say thank you. 01:01:08.110 --> 01:01:09.850 There are other things you can do. 01:01:09.850 --> 01:01:13.060 And it's interesting that over time, people figure this out, 01:01:13.060 --> 01:01:15.730 and there's some stock ways of ending things. 01:01:15.730 --> 01:01:21.180 So in the Catholic church, and the good old Latin mass, 01:01:21.180 --> 01:01:27.990 it ended with ite missa est, which 01:01:27.990 --> 01:01:31.380 translates approximately to OK, the mass is over, 01:01:31.380 --> 01:01:32.718 you can go home now. 01:01:32.718 --> 01:01:34.470 [LAUGHTER] 01:01:34.470 --> 01:01:37.440 And of course, at musical concerts, 01:01:37.440 --> 01:01:42.230 you know that it's time to clap not at the end of the song, 01:01:42.230 --> 01:01:45.810 but rather when the conductor goes over and shakes hands 01:01:45.810 --> 01:01:47.280 with the concert master. 01:01:47.280 --> 01:01:50.850 Those are conventions that tell you that the event is over. 01:01:53.470 --> 01:01:58.500 So those are all possibilities for here. 01:01:58.500 --> 01:02:00.180 But one more possibility, and that 01:02:00.180 --> 01:02:07.320 is that you can salute the audience. 01:02:07.320 --> 01:02:09.070 And by that, I mean, you can say something 01:02:09.070 --> 01:02:13.060 about how much you value your time at a place. 01:02:13.060 --> 01:02:20.000 So I could say, well, it's been great fun being here. 01:02:20.000 --> 01:02:22.780 It's been fascinating to see what you folks are doing here 01:02:22.780 --> 01:02:24.190 at MIT. 01:02:24.190 --> 01:02:27.535 I've been much stimulated and provoked 01:02:27.535 --> 01:02:29.410 by the kinds of questions you've been asking, 01:02:29.410 --> 01:02:30.800 it's been really great. 01:02:30.800 --> 01:02:33.380 And I look forward to coming back 01:02:33.380 --> 01:02:35.210 on many occasions in the future. 01:02:35.210 --> 01:02:36.693 So that salutes the audience. 01:02:36.693 --> 01:02:37.360 You can do that. 01:02:40.670 --> 01:02:42.520 Well, there it is. 01:02:42.520 --> 01:02:45.260 You know what? 01:02:45.260 --> 01:02:46.940 I'm glad you're here. 01:02:46.940 --> 01:02:48.830 And the reason is by being here, I 01:02:48.830 --> 01:02:51.590 think you have demonstrated an understanding 01:02:51.590 --> 01:02:54.770 that how you present and how you package your ideas is 01:02:54.770 --> 01:02:56.510 an important thing. 01:02:56.510 --> 01:02:58.013 And I salute you for that. 01:02:58.013 --> 01:03:03.500 [LAUGHTER] And I suggest that you come back again and bring 01:03:03.500 --> 01:03:05.990 your friends. 01:03:05.990 --> 01:03:09.340 [APPLAUSE]