More tips on PowerPoint presentations

Here you can find list of do's and dont's for PowerPoint presentations.

The dont's for PowerPoint

Here you can find Don McMillan's standup on the dont's of a PowerPoint presentation.

The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint

Here you can find Guy Kawasaki's recommendations on the length (10 slides), duration (20 minutes) and font size (30 points) in a PowerPoint presentation.

Here you can find a stream of his pitch. ('Bozo' means 'fool'.)

Lists of three and the rule of 3s: two speeches

Here you can find the first part of Steve Jobs's iPhone product launch speech.

Here you can find Barack Obama's inauguration speech.

In both of them, please pay attention to the usage of the lists of three and the rule of 3s.

Here is a stream where the rule of 3s is explained among other useful tips on making presentations.

Second sample summary

Global Population Growth Box by Box: Hans Rosling's TED Talk

This is a presentation on the future of global population growth given by Hans Rosling with the aid of Ikea boxes.

In 1960 the global population was 3 billion, one third of which was in the developed world. These people were rich, healthy and well-educated with small families. Their dream was to save for a car. The rest from developing countries, on the other hand, were struggling to have enough food and to save for a pair of shoes.

In 2010 there were 7 billion people in the world. Their situation can be summarised as follows:

-The 2 billion poor were still as poor as they had been in 1960.

- Four billion people lived in the new emerging economies, dreaming of buying a bicycle, and later on, a car.

- The 1 billion rich were even richer, saving to fly to exotic destinations.

Thus, the gap between the rich and the poor became wider, while most people were somewhere in the middle.

The  forecast for 2015 is that the level of welfare in places such as Shanghai will reach that of the western societies. At the same time, there will still be 3 billion people in emerging economies dreaming of an electric car if climate change is under control and energy is still cheap.   Moreover, the number of the poor looking for food  will increase by 50 to 100 per cent. Based on available data, these poor people tend to have large families and low child survival rates.

The solution that Mr Rosling proposes for a sustainable global population growth is to continue to improve child survival upto 90 % and to reduce family size by vaccination and family planning respectively. This is a way to ensure the well-being of the whole global population.

Along these lines, he considers himself to be a "possibilist".

In this process, he sees developed countries as the foundation of the modern world.

Food safety and traceability

Here you can find an article on food safety from The Economist.

Here you can find an article on food traceability from The New York Times.

Here you can find another text submitted by C.  Thank you C!

First sample summary

The U-bend of Life

Summary

The main idea the article conveys to the reader is as follows: ‘Life is not a long slow decline from sunlit uplands towards the valley of death. It is, rather, a U-bend.’ This statement is based on evidence that behavioral scientists and psychiatrists gathered in the studies carried out all over the world within the last few decades. The U-bend trend shows the changes in global and emotional (hedonic) well-being.

When people start out on adult life, they are, on average, pretty cheerful. Things go downhill from youth to middle age until they reach a nadir commonly known as the mid-life crisis. As people age, they lose their treasured qualities – vitality, mental sharpness and looks.  However, they also gain in what most people spend their lives pursuing, namely happiness.

Some scientists have decided to measure happiness itself. Along this line, Great Britain and France have started collecting data on well-being. Figures are mainly collected using surveys which ask two main questions. One of them concerns people’s assessment of their own lives to measure their global well-being, and the other, how they feel at any particular time to measure hedonic or emotional well-being. Following these studies, the analyses based on the perennial question of what makes people happy identified the following four key factors:

1. Gender: women are slightly happier than men, even though the former are more susceptible to depression.
2. Personality: neurotic people – those who are prone to guilt, anger and anxiety – tend to be unhappy, as they are mainly prone to having negative feelings, while extroverts tend to be the opposite.
3. External circumstances: This includes all sorts of variables in people’s lives, such as relationships, education, income and health, which shape the way they feel; happiness increases as these circumstances improve. Concerning income, conventional economics uses money as a proxy for utility – the dismal way in which the discipline talks about happiness. Nonetheless, one study examining data from around the world revealed the ‘Easterlin paradox’ – well-being depends not on absolute, but on relative, income: people feel miserable not because they are poor, but because they are at the bottom of the particular pile in which they find themselves. While the evidence for a correlation between income and happiness over time remains weak possibly due to the lack of data, the one for a correlation between counties is strong. Richer countries are clearly happier, but presumably cultural factors are at work, as well. E.g., Asians tend to be somewhat less happy than their income would suggest, and Scandinavians a little more so. Latin Americans are cheerful, while the republics of the former-Soviet Union are spectacularly miserable. Last but not least, Bulgaria is the saddest place in the world relative to its income.
4. Age: Both 30-year-olds and 70-year-olds generally think that the former are likely to be happier, but if you ask them to rate their own well-being, it seems that the 70-year-olds are the happier ones. Studies have shown that the global average at which people are the most unhappy is 46, i.e., the lowest point of the U-bend. Studies refute that the U-bend is merely an expression of the effect of external circumstances, such as employment status or children. Indeed,  this trend is most likely due to internal changes in one’s personality towards maturity: older people have fewer rows, come up with better solutions for conflicts, are better at controlling their emotions and misfortunes, and are less prone to anger. They come to focus on things that matter now, such as feelings, and less on long-term goals. They also come to accept their strengths and weaknesses, and perhaps, acceptance of aging itself is a source of relief that brings happiness. Moreover, happiness makes people healthier and more productive, and this applies to all age groups.

Second summary exercise

Here you can find a presentation by Hans Rosling.  Please watch it one or two times while taking notes, and then write a summary, which should be one double-spaced page. You can send your summaries to me before our session on Tuesday, 22nd of April.

Articles

Here you can find the document on articles along with the key for the exercises.

Living in Belgium

For our next session, we will be talking about living in Belgium.  In this context we can table some of the best kept secrets of this country for day and/or weekend trips.  We can also talk about the cultural activities on the offer in Brussels.  Finally, we can exchange some unique experiences we have had living in this country.

You can hereby have access to Agenda, the weekly magazine for the cultural events in Brussels. The website seems to be only in Dutch and French, but the paper version is in three languages, i.e., English, Dutch and French.  If you live in Brussels, you can get a free subscription for home delivery.

Economic crisis in Europe

Here you can find an article from The Economist's The World in 2013. 

Summary task

Here you can find two articles which you can synthesize in a summary report.Your summary should not be longer than one double-spaced page.  Please send it to me before our session on Tuesday, 9th of April.

Linkers

The first and second parts of the documents on linkers are hereby available.  You can also find the key for the exercises here.  As you do the exercises, please remember the following three types of linkers we have identified:

• Linking words that connect two parts of the same sentence as in the following example: We only have one week off for Easter, so we will be staying in Brussels.
• Linking words that connect two separate sentences as in the following four examples, which are different ways of saying the same thing:

1. We only have one week off for Easter.  Therefore, we will be staying in Brussels.
2. We only have one week off for Easter; therefore, we will be staying in Brussels.
3. We only have one week off for Easter.  We will, therefore, be staying in Brussels.
4. We only have one week off for Easter; we will, therefore, be staying in Brussels.

• Linking words that are covered under both the first and second types as in the four following examples:

1. Besides giving his friend a lift after work, he helped her with her grocery shopping.
2. He helped his friend with her grocery shopping, besides giving her a lift after work.
3. I am afraid I am not allowed to help you with that question.  Besides, I do not know the answer myself.
4. I am afraid I am not allowed to help you with that question; besides, I do not know the answer myself.

Note that the meaning of the word 'besides'  in the first two examples is different from its meaning in the last two examples.

In all these examples, please pay special attention to the punctuation.

Relative, -ed and -ing clauses

Here you can find some exercises on relative, -ed and -ing clauses along with the key.