Re: PROVEN: PowerPoint makes you dumb

That's certainly one possible conclusion. Another might be that you
shouldn't use a framing hammer for dental repair work. Or, that the art of
presentation of information is not intuitively obvious. A classic in the
field is Visualizing Data by William Cleveland. It's easy to blame the
tool (especially if it comes from Microsoft), but it may be that the tools
was used in the wrong place or wrong way.

Larry

At 17:49 12/14/2003, Michael Sinatra wrote:

>This NYT article describes a recent essay by Edward Tufte, the great
>information-visualization guru, in which he asserts that slideware (the
>most popular example of which is PowerPoint, but also includes MagicPoint,
>the OpenOffice slideware module, etc.) is often better at obfuscating
>information than clearly presenting it:
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/14/magazine/14POWER.html?ex=1071982800&en=799ad449b398c2d7&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE
>
>I'd also commend Tufte's website, where the essay and an excellent poster
>can be ordered:
>
>http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint
>
>I especially like the "But why read every slide aloud??" thought baloon
>above one of the Red Army soldiers. (Apparently most slideware presenters
>don't think their audiences have progressed to the point of literacy.)
>
>michael
>
>
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Larry M. Jones
School of Optometry, UC Berkeley
360 Minor Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720-2020
Phone 510/642-8664, Fax 510/643-5109
mailto:ljones@uclink4.berkeley.edu
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Received on Mon Dec 15 10:20:09 2003