How to present a paper?
This is another work from Lamport which I think will be useful to me as well as some of my students if they know to read and understand this short paper.
HOW TO PRESENT A PAPER
Leslie Lamport
4 August 1979Quotations from “East Coker” by T. S. Eliot.
“So here I am…
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it.”1. WHAT TO SAY
- Don’t give your paper; the audience can’t take it. If someone can understand in thirty minutes what it took you weeks to develop, then you’re in the wrong business.
- Do advertise your paper. The purpose of an automobile ad is to get potential customers to the showroom, not to give technical specifications. The purpose of your talk is to get people who might be interested in your work to read the paper, not to save them the trouble of reading it.
- Giving a good presentation is an art, requiring both practice and talent. No rules can turn you into an artist, but the following suggestions might be helpful.
- Describe simple examples rather than general results. Try to make the examples much too simple — you will not succeed.
- Don’t use formalism. If your results cannot be described simply and informally, then there is no reason why anyone should be interested in them.
- It is better to be inaccurate than incomprehensible. The place for accuracy is in the paper. (However, false advertising is unethical.)
2. HOW TO SAY IT
- Slides are effective. Here are some suggestions for their proper use.
- Don’t put too much on a slide — a picture of a thousand words is worthless. For 8 x 11 slides, all letters should be at least 3/8 inch high, with plenty of blank space. People in the back row have to read them too.
- Slides should be neat and legible. The listener isn’t your secretary; it’s not his job to decipher your handwriting.
- A rapid sequence of slides has a hypnotic effect. Unless you are a licensed hypnotist, don’t use more than one slide per minute.
- Time your talk. Running over your allotted time is a mark of incompetence, and displaying your incompetence is a poor way to get someone to read your paper. Remember that talking to an audience takes longer than talking to a mirror.
3. DA CAPO
- You are now thinking: “All those dull speakers I’ve listened to should use these rules, but I don’t need them because my talks are interesting.” All those dull speakers are now thinking exactly the same thing. Read the rules again with the proper humility. They apply to everyone.
“The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.”4. CODA – For Session Chairmen
- Be utterly ruthless about enforcing time limits. Warn the speaker when he has 10 minutes left and when he has 5 minutes left, and stop him in midsentence when his time is up. The audience will be grateful. (A loud alarm clock works quite well if you don’t turn it off until the speaker has finished talking.)
- Protect the speaker and the audience from inappropriate questions. Questions should be allowed during the talk only if the audience is small and the question is a simple request for clarification. After the talk, you must be prepared to silence the following two kinds of questioner.
- One who leads the speaker into a long discussion of an obscure detail which is of no interest to most of the audience.
- One who monopolizes the time arguing with the speaker over unresolvable philosophical issues.
Remember that silencing one person enables the rest of the audience to ask questions.
Dmitry had a great start
Well, looks like the strategy is working. We decided to start Dmitry on reading books of older children like Enid Blyton. We bought some of Blyton’s books yesterday to cultivate reading habit. This morning while he was waiting for me to get ready to send him to school, he sat near the bookshelf and read one of the Blyton’s. I saw it but I did not speak a word about his action but just letting him enjoying his reading alone.
This was the story. Last night before going to bed, I took those books into my working room and wrote the post here. The books were on my desk till this morning. After I was done with emails, I took the books to the bookshelf. He saw me taking the books and asked me why I took his books. I replied, “well, daddy found it interesting to read so daddy read it last night.”. He replied without hesitating, “Those are my books. Why do you read it?”. I knew it was a right moment to inspire him so I replied, “Daddy finds it interesting so daddy wants to read it no matter what book it is.” Then I turned away without speaking too much and ate my breakfast.
After some moment, I saw him reading one of the books. He has been inspired and I hope he will continue to inspire himself. When I was ready to go, I saw the other two little brothers holding Blyton’s books in their hands. The two brothers are not at the level yet but, well, that’s a great start.
Cultivate reading habit
Dmitry is able to read some Peter & Jane’s books. He has done reading some of the books. We got some more books this morning at the bookstore. Three books by Enid Blyton. Well, perhaps it is too early for a six year old to begin with Enid Blyton but I think it is not too early. First, it is good cultivating a good reading habit at early stage. Second, it is time to introduce books with less illustration.
Enid Blyton’s books can be boring for a six year old without too much illustration. All the illustrations are in black and white, no color. In my opinion, the earlier to start off with more text will train a child’s critical reading skill. He may not understand too much at the start but eventually his mind will become more receptive.
Here are the three books we bought.
Blyton’s books often mirrored fantasies of young children leading their minds to imagination and to explore. Although I only read one or two of her book during my younger days in school, I like Blyton’s because of her unique presentation of stories with fantasies and allow imaginative freedom in young children. Her books will help improve children’s imagination and provoke critical thinking as well.
Well, let see how Dmitry moving along this direction.
Another inspiration
While I was helping students to plan and secure scholarship for their graduate study abroad, I realized two types of mind. One is the Chinese-educated mind and the other the opposite. The Chinese-educated minds are tend to be less receptive in ideas especially abstract ideas and are more materialistic. These minds are closed and also are obligated to relationship among their friends, peers and family members. The Chinese-educated minds are more self-centered, have no clear definition of goals, and have desires to outwit matters without investing too much efforts. There are more characteristic of these Chinese-educated mind but just to mentioned a few for the purpose of this post.
Well, a Chinese-educated mind I am talking above is referring to people who have gone through primary education in Chinese medium and many of them may continue studying Chinese in their secondary school which is in Malay medium.
I was a Chinese-educated mind for 6 years in my primary education and I took Chinese language in the first to second year of my secondary education. However, my thinking is quite westernized. I use English in my work but I do communicate in Chinese with certain people when English is not an effective language to them. Besides the 8 years of Chinese language class, I use English most of the time and I prefer English to Chinese. I was called a banana man by female ex-classmates during my sixth grade because I spoke English and they hated it. Banana man means a person looks like a banana not because of shape but the skin color. The banana skin is yellow in color analogous to the skin color of a Chinese. But when we peel off the banana skin, the white meat of the fruit reveals. The white meat symbolizes a westerner. A Chinese who speaks English and does not know (or forget or intentionally not to speak) Chinese is called a banana man among some Malaysia Chinese. What a ridiculous discrimination.
There are people purportedly against we sending our children to non-Chinese school. In my opinion, it is not necessary to be in the Chinese education system to learn Chinese and to maintain our own culture. There are many so called Chinese educated people can’t even write proper Chinese and/or have proper pronunciation of Chinese words. Many claim themselves to be the savior of Chinese cultures education in Malaysia do not even have a mere understanding of our own cultures. It appears that I know better than most of them.
But today, I am still able to write Chinese as you may see some Chinese posts and poems in my blog.
Let’s come back to the scholarship things. Most Chinese-educated students do not have a clear goal in their mind. It is a huge dark gray blank screen and they do not know where and how to start defining their goal. I have a clearer defined goal and audibly know what I want. This is another inspiration for my decision.
Another inspiration for me is to prove another impossible and also to set an example to my children so that they will see their daddy is still able to continue learning. Perhaps, this is one of another good way to bring up my children by setting an example of good learning attitude.
Clear things up
I wrote an article earlier today and after I have gone through it again this evening, I found some statements which some readers might have misunderstood. The reason I write this post is to clear things up so that the aforementioned article will not be misunderstood.
No one has given me a tick off or spark. I found my inspiration while working to help some undergraduate students to plan and secure scholarship for their graduate study abroad.
I wrote another post much earlier about Ada tasking on multi-core and received couple of comments yesterday. I have been a mentor to dragon and apparently she knows more than me about distributed computing with Ada. It is not about pride but an assessment to my knowledge which needs to be upgraded. I then got a bigger inspiration after I read some papers about distributed computing, quantum computing, computational physics, computational mathematics etc. These papers or articles have fascinated my imagination and of course have excited my long sleeping inspiration. Hence, a powerful spark has enlightened my stimulus.
As in the comment, the baggages which I mentioned were certainly not people around me. What I meant was that I was ready to let go many things like changing my car to a smaller car so that I could liquidate some fund for aid. What I meant was that I was willing to let go material things I was owning or longing to own.
I will be very sad if people has misunderstood my intention and purpose so I decide to write this post to clear things up.
Huge disappointment and backing off
I used to be firm with my principles in most things but there’s a huge disappointment after all I have done. It makes me realize at some point, I will have to back off and start thinking about my own ambition. In the past 5 years of experience working with university students, I learned a lot from them in the way of handling disappointment and also enjoying the fruits. One of the project I will never forget is the 2006 FYP at UTAR. My team won a trophy, a consolation trophy to be precise, but the students decided to present it to me for memory. I have seen most of my teams to pull through their projects and graduated. Some are continuing their graduate study which I am somehow proud of their achievement.
I have not revealed my feeling towards them so far. But somehow this comes to me suddenly and I realize it is time for me to move on and leave behind my principles and pride for the betterment of my life.
I have decided to continue my study and to pursue my goal once I dreamed so much. Some readers or friends may say I am impulsive. But this thought has been in my mind since 2 years ago and I am waiting for the spark to light it off. I have found the spark though.
First astronomy lesson
After the TV, I went to lock the outer gate. The sky was clear and I could see the full moon and many stars. I saw the brightest star twinkling on the lower left corner not far away from the moon. I guessed it was Jupiter. Jupiter is the largest planet and one of the four outer gas giants or Jovians in our solar system. To be sure, I checked with Stellarium on my Mac and confirmed it was Jupiter.
Then I called the boys and mom to gaze at the sky and told them it was Jupiter the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet in our solar system. I told them that Jupiter would take about 11 years to orbit the Sun compare to one year for our planet earth. The two older boys responded with a big “Wow!” Nik was rather excited and very vocal.
We could also see some other stars and Ara, Triangulum Australe, Libra and Virgo constellation. They were magnificent.
The kids had their first astronomy lesson and so did I. I learned that Pluto is no longer the ninth planet in our solar system. Instead, the International Astronomical Union or IAU has reclassified Pluto as one of the four dwarf planets together with Ceres, Makemake and Eris.
I will reconsider to acquire a telescope soon. I almost invested in a Meade’s ETX-90PE in 1998 but for some reason I did not. I will consider a larger model, ETX-125PE.
I became interested in astronomy when I was first introduced by two persons. One was Dr. Ghaffar and Khoo. Dr. Ghaffar is a nuclear physicist and Khoo is my ex-classmate and a mechanical engineer. Both of them were very involved in star gazing. Khoo had even built his own 12″ diameter Newtonian Reflective Telescope.
I almost invested into one as mentioned earlier but I didn’t. At some point, I became very interested in astrophysics. Writing software to model celestial body can be interestingly challenging. Perhaps I should go get a Ph.D. and become an astrophysicist. Or, perhaps, one of the boys will become a renown astrophysicist.
Tycoon or dick heads?
Dressing is really a knowledge for both men and women. Dressing reflects professionalism and social status of the person. Those youngsters in the universities lack dressing knowledge. Universities enforced dress code to prohibit sandals, shorts etc in campus but that does not do any help in students’ dressing.
I read on a blog about a comment by Nemesis, where he described some university students as dick heads. His comment was deleted later because he used the offending term: dick head. Well, I read about it and had a good laugh.
Thinking in a nutshell
Most Malaysia graduate students lack critical thinking and have narrow thinking in their small nutshell and yet they think they are thinking and handling problems like an adult. I don’t know exactly what makes them having this false perception but I think it is the lacking of critical thinking, experience and limited exposure in the real world of survivor. They are restrained only to academic and their activities circles are also bounded by non-sense laws set by the universities. These laws are designed to suppress the basic human rights of the students. Read more
Press Conference Against MMU’s Imposition of IT Service Fee
(Repost)
After a successful imposition of library fee, now MMU grubs for more! The latest announcement that MMU is planning to impose an annual IT service fee of RM100 from each student starting this trimester has exasperated everyone. Complaints are heard everywhere. But look, the Finance Division can’t hear you; the President can’t hear you. The voice of SRC alone is too soft. Now we need to borrow the foreign force to amplify our voices!
There will be a press conference held at DAP Dun Ayer Keroh Service Centre on this coming Thursday. Press and media will be present at the conference.
Date : July 3, 2008
Time : 12:30PM
Venue : 63-2, Jalan DB1, Taman Bukit Beruang Indah, 75450 Bukit Beruang. (Same row with US Pizza, second last lot)
反对MMU收费新闻招待会
（转帖）
MMU强收每位学生RM60的图书馆费还不够，居然还得寸进尺想再收取每人RM100的IT服务费，岂有此理？消息一放，怨声四起。但是，在网站上叫骂，有用吗？MMU的高层可晓得你对他们的不满？单靠SRC替我们请愿，有用吗？我们有近两万人的学生，为何只靠那几十位？我们自身的权利，应当由我们自己争取，而不是单靠SRC，因为到底付钱的是我们。试问SRC能为我们承担吗？ 现在让你站出来发言的机会来了。这个星期四在Ayer Keroh区民主行动党服务中心将有一项新闻招待会让MMU学生有机会发表有关课题和其它不合理的课题。多家媒体将出席这项招待会。
日期：3/7/08
时间：12:30PM
地点：63-2, Jalan DB1, Taman Bukit Beruang Indah, 75450 Bukit Beruang. (和US Pizza同排, 最后第二间)
(English version here)
多难兴邦
温爷爷在北川中学黑板上写的四个大字：“多难兴邦”。这四个字已经铭刻在忆万中国人心中。这四个字也给了我很大的回响。
一个国家灾难重重，必能训练出超强的毅力和团结力以应付重重灾难。一个人如果困难重重，也必能训练出超强的毅力和顺应能力。所以，当一个人遇上重重困难时，千万要记得温爷爷的四个字：“多难兴邦”！绝对要理性起来，绝不能灰心和放弃。
好一个“多难兴邦（人）”！
Malaysia tertiary education – A systemic failure
One common thing I found especially in Computer Science (and engineering faculty where programming is taught) in all my visits to most Malaysian universities, none of their programming courses is ever impressive to me. The state universities are slightly better than private universities. Yet, still many of them do not teach proper programming concepts. Most of the programming courses teach C or Java as an introductory to programming. The worst thing is that these lecturers have not even mastered the language themselves.
One common thread is that, students are often given an assignment to use other programming languages like Visual Basic which they have not been taught any lesson. Students have to pick up the language themselves.
As the result, many local university graduates do not have proper training in programming and the worst, lack of systematic discipline and systematic reasoning skills. I have personally experienced this with interns and projects seeded to universities.
Some of these graduates will continue doing their master degree in the comfort of the university environment, simply they cannot find a job, they become assistant lecturers. This begins the vicious cycle. A student without proper training in programming gets into the teaching system and begins to teach improper method to younger students!
This is a systemic failure in our local education system. This is only the tip of the iceberg. I once knew a student from TARC (Tar College). She was doing accounting after her STPM. She was suffering because she could not catch up with the course work due to bad command of English. After some lengthy discussions, she finally decided to quit. Good for her. But, do you know what? She applied and was admitted into teacher training program. By now, I guess, she is teaching in the primary or secondary school. There goes another vicious cycle. A sub-standard teaching the younger generation to be sub-standards!
Queue up please!
When grandma, Dmitry and I were at the immigration department to renew our passport, I noticed a group of students from Kolej Yayasan Saad at the department to apply for their passports too. One infuriating scenario was that these students were treated like VIPs and they did not have to queue up. They were escorted by immigration officers into the counter to apply their passport. Ordinary people were waiting for their numbers to be called outside the counter.
Why did they have such privilege? Isn’t supposed to teach these school children to queue up and to play fair in the society? I guessed these students really enjoyed being a VIP and roamed in the corridor of power! What a bunch spoilt brats!
Laser Surgery
I had a laser surgery for my right eye this afternoon. It is an outpatient procedure. It took me about 5 minutes or less but I had to wait from 10AM till 1:30PM. That was a long wait.
I had my cataract surgery on June 19, 2007. Read here. I also posted a video of a cataract surgery here. The surgery removed my natural lens which had been clouded by the penta-fluoro carbon (C3F8) gas in the retina repair surgery. A new artificial lens was inserted to replace my natural lens. The only consolation reward I could think of was that my short-sightedness was reduced by half, as my doctor told me.
During the phacoemulsification procedure, the lens is removed but not the posterior lens capsule. It has to be left there to hold the new artificial lens. Not all lens cells can be completely removed. Some are left behind. Sometimes, the lens cells grow across the new lens. It is more likely to grow back if you are younger. Sometimes this happens in a few months after the cataract surgery, sometimes years. This is not a re-growth of cataract. It is the thickening of the back of the lens capsule. It is called the posterior lens capsular opacification. The picture shows the posterior capsular opacification on retroillumination.
Frequency-doubled Nd:YAG (neodymium-doped yttrium aluminium garnet; Nd:Y3Al5O12) laser with a wave length of 532nm is used to make a “hole” in part of the capsule to allow light to pass through the lens directly. This procedure is called YAG laser capsulotomy. The doctor aims the laser exactly onto the posterior lens capsule and fires very short pulses of laser to blast off the part of the capsule and make a small circle shaped area. This leaves some of the capsule intact to hold the lens. The very small part of the lens capsule which is cut away falls harmlessly inside the eye.
The laser capsulotomy is very quick and not painful at all. I only heard some clicking noise as the laser was working. My vision on my right eye became clear again immediately after the procedure. The only discomfort I had was when my doctor attached a contact lens onto my eye.
-
Recent Entries
- Web Design Service2.1
- Vision through iPhone11.27
- November Rain11.17
- R.I.P. Dennis M. Ritchie10.13
- Torenia fournieri10.7
- R.I.P. Steve Jobs10.6
- 老同学重逢9.13
- How to detect infrared?9.9
- Regulus – My new (Lion) iMac8.13
- Ada and Multiple Inheritance7.28
- Deadly techniques of Uechiryu7.26
- Bersih 2.0: The truth that cannot be covered7.11
- Bersih 2.0 Worldwide7.11
- Bersih 2.0: The ancient Chinese philosophy7.10
- Bersih 2.0 – Love to my country7.9
Family
Blogroll
- A Moonlight Rendezvous
- AdaStar Informatics
- AdrianHoe.com
- allthingspurple
- Black Belt Mama
- Cartography
- chapados.org
- Colin Charles Agenda
- David’s Blog
- Embedded Computing Design
- Eric’s Blog
- 闲云孤鹤 – 清冷香中抱膝吟
- Freedom To Tinker
- gps tracklog
- Invasive Species
- Lambda the Ultimate
- Love Aficionado
- Malaysia Today
- Moments to Ponder
- PL News: Programming Language News
- Purely Random
- Robert Hanson’s Blog
- Sara Ford’s Karate Weblog
- Selby Shotokan Karate Club
- Snapshot
- The Suzette
- Uechi-Ryu Zankai Malaysia
- Vision through iPhone
- Wired News
- Woody Ooi’s Truth
- 孟文渊的博客 – Ada语言开发网站
Links
-
Site Stats & Tools
There are currently 882 posts and 1,684 comments, contained within 125 categories and 663 tags.
Visitors since February 1, 2002
Listen to my podcast