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9.2
Ditch the Table of Contents
Chances are, you will start with an introduction and then proceed with some background, past research, results, and end with conclusions. You will then open the
floor to questions. Pretty much in that exact sequence. Do you need a slide and can
you afford wasting precious seconds to state the obvious?
Your audience might benefit from a table of contents to have the presentation’s
structure in mind. But there is a better way.
Let’s say you present experimental results, which highlighted problems. To
address these problems, you conducted numerical simulations. Finally, you established correlations between the experimental and numerical work, and you drew
some conclusions. You could have the following table of contents displayed:
• Background
• Experimental Test setup
• Results
• Numerical simulations
• Discussion and Conclusion
But much more effective, and much more entertaining, would be to introduce,
one at a time:
• A representative image of your experiment or experimental setup
• A representative image of your numerical simulations
• A two-way arrow pointing between the two
No text. And the audience knows what you plan on talking about.
9 Structure