Learning Log: Review a slide presentation

Overview

By now, you have started learning how to create effective slide presentations to share your findings. Now, you’ll complete an entry in your learning log to evaluate a slide presentation using what you have learned. By the time you complete this entry, you will have a stronger understanding of how to create an effective slide presentation using best practices from this course. This will help you evaluate your own work later on.

Evaluate a series of slides

Spend a few minutes going through the slide deck: Turning revenue losses into profit opportunity .

OR

Download the presentation:

Positive and negative trends in annual sales

This deck is incomplete and each slide might have room for improvement.

Use your knowledge of presentations to ask yourself: What do you like about each slide? How would you improve each slide? To help guide your review, consider the following best practices for slide decks:

• Include a title, subtitle, and date
• Use a logical sequence of slides
• Provide an agenda with a timeline
• Limit the amount of text on slides. Your audience should be able to scan each block of text on your slides within 5 seconds
• Start with the business task. Focus on the business task and frame the information in the context of the business task.
• Establish the initial hypothesis
• Show what business metrics you used
• Use visualizations
• Introduce the graphic by name
• Provide a title for each graph
• Go from the general to the specific
• Use speaker notes to help you remember talking points
• Include key takeaways

You can also make edits directly to the presentation to improve it.

Complete the evaluation table

Now that you have reviewed the deck by yourself, use the evaluation table in the learning log template linked below to record your thoughts about this table. The table will have a column for you to take notes on what worked well in each slide and what could be improved. It will appear like this in your template:

Slide #	What works well	What could improved
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

Once you have completed the evaluation table, you’ll have a chance to reflect on the overall presentation and how effective it is!

Access your learning log

To use the template for this course item, click the link below and select “Use Template.”

Link to learning log template: Review a slide presentation

OR

If you don’t have a Google account, you can download the template directly from the attachment below.

Learning Log Template_ Review a slide presentation

Reflection

Now that you’ve reviewed the slide presentation and completed the evaluation table, take a moment to reflect on the work you just did. In your learning log template, write 2-3 sentences (40-60 words) in response to each question below:

• How effective was the overall presentation?
• What would you do differently for this presentation? What would you do the same?
• How can you use presentation best practices to help you create your own slide decks in the future?

When you’ve finished your entry in the learning log template, make sure to save the document so your response is somewhere accessible. This will help you continue applying data analysis to your everyday life. You will also be able to track your progress and growth as a data analyst.

Step-by-step critique of a presentation

This reading provides an orientation of two upcoming videos:

• Connor: Messy example of a data presentation
• Connor: Good example of a data presentation

To get the most out of these videos, you should watch them together (back to back). In the first video, Connor introduces a presentation that is confusing and hard to follow. In the second video, he returns to talk about what can be done to improve it and help the audience better understand the data and conclusions being shared.

Messy data presentation

In the first video, watch and listen carefully for the specific reasons the “messy” presentation falls short. Here is a preview:

• No story or logical flow
• No titles
• Too much text
• Inconsistent format (no theme)
• No recommendation or conclusion at the end

Messy presentation: people don’t know where to focus their attention

The main problem with the messy presentation is the lack of a logical flow. Notice also how the data visualizations are hard to understand and appear without any introduction or explanation. The audience has no sense of what they are looking at and why. When people in the audience have to figure out what the data means without any help, they can end up being lost, confused, and unclear about any actions they need to take.

Good data presentation

In the second video, numerous best practices are applied to create a better presentation on the same topic. This “good” presentation is so much easier to understand than the messy one! Here is a preview:

• Title and date the presentation was last updated
• Flow or table of contents
• Transition slides
• Visual introduction to the data (also used as a repeated theme)
• Animated bullet points
• Annotations on top of visuals
• Logic and progression
• Limitations to the data (caveats) - what the data can’t tell you

Tip: As you watch this video, take notes about what Connor suggests to create a good presentation. You can keep these notes in your journal. When you create your own presentations, refer back to your notes. This will help you to develop your own thinking about the quality of presentations.

Good presentation: people are logically guided through the data The good presentation logically guides the audience through the data – from the objectives at the beginning all the way to the conclusions at the end. Notice how the data visualizations are introduced using a common theme and are thoughtfully placed before each conclusion. A good presentation gives people in the audience the facts and data, helps them understand what the data means, and provides takeaways about how they can use their understanding to make a change or do some good.

Up next

Get started with the messy vs. good presentation comparison by viewing the first video: Connor: Messy example of a data presentation .

Putting evaluation of presentations into practice

You just spent some time with Connor looking at "messy" and "good" data presentations. He highlighted problems in the messy presentation and demonstrated how a good presentation tells a clearer story and provides a more logical flow for the audience.

Take a moment to reflect on everything that Connor shared and, if helpful, review the notes you took while watching the videos.

• How has your thinking changed about creating a good presentation after you have analyzed data?

Submit five to eight sentences (200-250 words) responding to the above question. Then, visit the discussion forum to read what others have written, and engage with at least two other posts by sharing your thoughts about what they wrote.

Test your knowledge on effective presentations

Question 1

Which of the following is an example of a business task? Select all that apply.

• Comparing in-person and online clothing purchasing trends to make stocking decisions
• Theorizing that the amount of coffee purchased per day increases in the summer
• Finding relationships between weather patterns and economic activity
• Identifying a company’s most productive manufacturing plants

Question 2

A supervisor asks a junior data analyst to present two hypotheses regarding a data analytics project. What is the purpose of a hypothesis?

A. To theorize about data

B. To describe methods

C. To summarize data

D. To introduce findings

The correct answer is A. To theorize about data. Explain: The purpose of a hypothesis is to theorize about your data. Data analysts use them to establish what they want to prove or disprove.

Question 3

Which of the following is an example of an initial hypothesis? Select all that apply.

• A relationship exists between the holiday season and increased traffic congestion
• A manufacturing plant's reduced output in the last month is due to a natural disaster that shut down production.
• A company's trend of annual revenue growth is from an increasing number of online sales
• An increase in wildlife presence is due to a record high in annual rainfall

Explain: An initial hypothesis is a theory you’re trying to prove or disprove with data. Examples of an initial hypothesis include: a trend of annual revenue growth from an increasing number of online sales, a relationship between the holiday season and increased traffic congestion, and an increase of wildlife presence from a record high in annual rainfall.

Question 4

In the McCandless Method, the first step involves communicating to the audience where they should focus and what the graphic is about. Which step is this?

A. State the insight of your graphic

B. Calling out data to support your insights

C. Answer obvious questions before they’re asked

D. Introduce the graphic by name

The correct answer is D. Introduce the graphic by name. Explain: In the McCandless Method, the first step involves communicating to the audience where they should focus and what the graphic is about. This is the step for introducing the graphic by name.