PATRICK WINSTON: The Uniform
Code of Military Justice
specifies court martial for
any officer who sends a soldier
into battle without a weapon.
There ought to be a similar
protection for students
because students
shouldn't go out
into life without the
ability to communicate,
and that's because
your success in life
will be determined largely
by your ability to speak,
your ability to write, and
the quality of your ideas,
in that order.
I know that I can be
successful in this
because the quality
of communication,
your speaking, your
writing, is largely
determined by this formula.
It's a matter of how
much knowledge you have,
how much you practice
with that knowledge,
and your inherent
talent, and notice
that the T is very small.
What really matters
is what you know.
This point came to me suddenly
a few decades ago when
I was skiing at Sun Valley.
I had heard that it was
Celebrity Weekend, and one
of the celebrities
was Mary Lou Retton,
famous Olympic gymnast,
perfect 10s in the vault.
And I heard that she
was a novice at skiing,
so when the opportune
moment arrived,
I looked over on
the novice slope
and saw this young woman who,
when she became unbalanced,
went like that.
And I said that's got to be her.
That must be the gymnast.
But then, it occurred to
me, I'm a much better skier
than she is, and she's an
Olympic athlete-- not only
an ordinary Olympic
athlete, an outstanding one.
And I was a better skier because
I had the K, and I had the P,
and all she had
was the T. So you
can get a lot better
than people who
may have inherent
talents if you have
the right amount of knowledge.
So that's what my objective is
today, and here's my promise.
Today, you will
see some examples
of what you can put in your
armamentarium of speaking
techniques, and it
will be the case
that some one of those examples,
some heuristic, some technique,
maybe only one, will make--
will be the one that
gets you the job.
And so this is a very
non-linear process.
You never know when
it's going to happen,
but that is my promise.
By the end of the
next 60 minutes,
you'll have been exposed to
a lot of ideas, some of which
you'll incorporate into
your own repertoire,
and they will ensure that you
get the maximum opportunity
to have your ideas
valued and accepted
by the people you speak with.
Now, in order to
do that, we have
to have a rule of
engagement, and that
is no laptops, no cell phones.
So if you could
close those, I'll
start up as soon as you're done.
Some people ask why that
is a rule of engagement,
and the answer
is, we humans only
have one language processor.
And if your language
processor is enga--
could you shut the
laptop, please?
If your language processor
is engaged browsing the web
or reading your email,
you're distracted.
And worse yet, you distract
all of the people around you.
Studies have shown that.
And worse yet, if I see a
open laptop somewhere back
there or up here, it drives
me nuts, and I do a worse job.
And so that ensures
that all of your friends
who are paying attention
don't get the performance
that they came to have.
So that's it for preamble.
Let's get started.
First thing we talk about,
of course, is how to start.
Some people think
the right thing to do
is to start a talk with a joke.
I don't recommend
it, and the reason
is that, in the
beginning of a talk,
people are still putting
their laptops away.
They're becoming adjusted
to your speaking parameters,
to your vocal parameters, and
they're not ready for a joke.
So it doesn't work very well.
They usually fall flat.
What you want to do instead is
start with empowerment promise.
You want to tell
people what they're
going to know at
the end of the hour
that they didn't know at
the beginning of the hour.
It's an empowerment promise.
It's the reason for being here.
What would be an example?
Oh, I see.
At the end of this 60
minutes, you will know things
about speaking you
don't know now,
and something among
those things you know
will make a difference
in your life.
Yeah, that's an
empowerment promise,
so that's the best way to start.
So now that I've talked a
little bit about how to start,
what I want to do is give you
some samples of heuristics
that are always on my
mind when I give a talk,
and first of these heuristics is
that it's a good idea to cycle
on the subject.
Go around it.
Go round it again.
Go round it again.
Some people say, tell him
what you want to tell him.
Tell him again, and then
tell him a third time,
as if people
weren't intelligent.
But the point is--
the reason is-- well, there
are many reasons, one of which
is, at any given
moment, about 20% of you
will be fogged out no
matter what the lecture is.
So if you want to ensure that
the probability that everybody
gets it is high, you need
to say it three times.
So cycling is one of
the things that I always
think about when I give a talk.
Another thing I think about
is, in explaining my idea,
I want to build a fence around
it so that it's not confused
with somebody else's idea.
So if you were from Mars,
and I was teaching you
about what an arch is,
I might say to you,
well, that's an arch.
And that's not to be confused
with some other things
that other people
might think is--
this is not an arch.
That's not an arch.
I'm building a
fence around my idea
so that it can be distinguished
from somebody else's idea.
So in a more technical
sense, I might say, well,
my algorithm might similar--
might seem similar
to Jones's algorithm,
except his is exponential,
and mine's linear.
That's putting a
fence around your idea
so that people can not
be confused about how it
might relate to something else.
The third thing on
this list of samples
is the idea of
verbal punctuation.
And the idea here is
that, because people
will occasionally fog out and
need to get back on the bus,
you need to provide some
landmark places where
you're announcing that it's
a good time to get back on.
So I might, in this
talk, say something
about this being my outline.
The first thing we're going to
do is talk about how to start.
Then we're going to deal
with these four samples,
and among these
four samples, I've
talked about the first
idea-- that's cycling.
The second idea,
building-- and now,
the third idea is
verbal punctuation.
So I'm enumerating
and providing numbers.
I'm giving you a sense that
there's a seam in the talk,
and you can get back on.
So now, we're on a roll,
and since we're on a roll,
can you guess what fourth
idea might be here--
an idea that helps people
get back on the bus?
AUDIENCE: Ask a question.
PATRICK WINSTON: Yes?
AUDIENCE: Ask a question.
[INAUDIBLE]
PATRICK WINSTON:
Ask a question, yes.
Thank you.
So ask a question.
And so I will ask a question--
how much dead air can there be?
How long can I pause?
I counted seven seconds.
It seemed like an eternity to
me to wait and not say anything
for seven seconds, but that's
the standard amount of time
you can wait for an answer.
And of course, the question
has to be carefully chosen.
It can't be too obvious
because then people
will be embarrassed to say
it, but the answers can't
be too hard because then nobody
will have anything to say.
So here are some
sample heuristics
you can put in
your armamentarium
and build up your repertoire
of ideas about presentation.
And now, if this
persuades you that there
is something to know,
that there is knowledge,
then I've already succeeded
because what I want to convince
you of, is if you watch the
speakers you admire and feel
are effective,
and ask yourselves
why they're successful,
then you can
build up your own
personal repertoire
and develop your
own personal style.
And that's my
fundamental objective,
and the rest of this
talk is about some
of the things that are
in my armamentarium
that I think are effective.
So next thing on
our agenda, as we
start to discuss
these other things,
is a discussion
of time and place.
So what do you think is a
good time to have a lecture?
11 AM?
Yeah.
And the reason is most people
at MIT are awake by then,
and hardly anyone has
gone back to sleep.
It's not right after a meal.
People aren't fatigued
from this or that.
It's a great time
to have a lecture.
So that brings me, next,
to the question of what
about the place?
And the most important
thing about the place
is that it be well lit.
This room is well lit.
Problem with other kinds
of rooms is that we humans,
whenever the lights
go down, or whenever
the room is dimly
lighted, it signals
that we should go to sleep.
So whenever I go
somewhere to give a talk,
even today, the
first thing I do when
I speak to the
audio-visual people
is say, keep the lights full up.
Oh, they might reply, people
will see the slides better
if we turn the lights
off, and then I reply,
it's extremely hard to see
slides through closed eyelids.
What else can you
say about the place?
Well, the place
should be cased, and I
mean that in a colloquial
sense, of like if you're
robbing a bank, you
would go to the bank
some occasions before
to see what it's like,
so there are no surprises
when you do your robbery.
So whenever I go
somewhere to speak,
the first thing I ask my host
to do is to take me to the place
where I'll be speaking so that
if there are any weirdnesses,
I'll be able to deal with it.
Sometimes, it might
require some intervention.
Sometimes, it just might
require me to understand
what the challenges are.
So when I came
here this morning,
I did what I typically do.
I imagined that
all the seats were
filled with disinterested
farm animals,
and that way, I knew that,
no matter how bad it was,
it wouldn't be as bad as that.
So finally, it should
be reasonably--
it should be
reasonably populated.
It should be the case that--
if there were 10
people in this hall,
everyone would be
wondering, what's
going on that's so much more
interesting that nobody's here.
So you want to get a
right sized place that's--
doesn't have to
be packed, but it
has to be more than half full.
So those are some thoughts
about a time and place.
Next thing I want to
talk about is a subject
of boards and props and slides.
Well, these are the
tools of the trade.
I believe that this is the
right tool for speaking
when your purpose is informing.
The slides are good when
your purpose is exposing,
but this is what I use when I'm
informing, teaching, lecturing,
and there's several
reasons why I use it.
For one thing, when
you use the board,
you have a graphic quality.
It's the case that, when
you have a board, then
you can easily exploit the
fact that you can use graphics
in your presentation.
So that's the graphic quality
that I like, and the next thing
I like is the speed property.
The speed with which you
write on the blackboard
is approximately the speed at
which people can absorb ideas.
If you go flipping
through a bunch of slides,
nobody can go that fast.
Finally, one great
property of a board
is that it can be a target.
Many people who are
novices at speaking
find themselves suddenly
aware of their hands.
It's as if their hands were
private parts that shouldn't
be exposed in public, so right
away, they go into the pockets,
and this is considered insulting
in some parts of the world.
Or alternatively,
maybe the hands
will go in back like this.
I was once in a convent
in Serbia, and my host--
as soon as we entered,
a nun came up to us
and offered us a refreshment.
And I was about to
say, no, thank you,
and he said, eat
that stuff or die.
It's a question of local
custom and politeness.
But then before
anything happened there,
the nun pulled my
hands out like this
because it was extraordinarily
insulting in that culture
to have your hands
behind your back.
So why is that?
Well, it's usually
supposed that that's
that it has to do with whether
you're concealing a weapon.
So if your hands are in your
pockets or behind your back,
then it looks like you
might have a weapon,
and that's what I
mean by the virtue--
one of these virtues
of the board.
Now, you have something
to do with your hands.
You can point out the stuff.
I was once watching Seymour
Papert give a lecture,
and I thought it was terrific.
So I went a second time--
first time to absorb
the content, second time
to note style.
And what I discovered is
that Papert was constantly
pointing at the board.
And then I thought
about it a little while,
and I noted that none of
the stuff he was pointing to
had anything to do with
what he was saying.
Nevertheless, it was
an effective technique.
So that's just a little
bit about the virtue
of blackboards.
Now, I want to talk about props.
The custodians of
knowledge about props
are the playwrights.
Many decades ago, I saw
a play by Henrik Ibsen.
It was Hedda Gabler.
I remember vaguely that it was
about a woman in an unhappy
marriage, and her husband was in
competition for an academic job
with somebody else.
And he was going to lose
partly because he was boring,
and partly because the
competitor had just
written a magnificent book.
By the way, this
is back in the days
before there were copying
machines and computers.
Anyhow, as the play opens,
there's a potbellied stove,
and in the beginning
of the play,
the potbelly stove,
with its open door,
just has some slightly
glowing embers.
But the potbellied
stove is always there,
and as tension
mounts in the play,
and you see this
manuscript, this
prop that Ibsen so artfully
used, you just know
that something's
going to happen,
because as the play goes on,
the fire gets bigger and hotter
and finally all
consuming, and you just
know that that manuscript is
going to go into that fire.
This memorable thing is what
I remember about the play.
So playwrights have got
this all figured out,
but on the other hand,
they're not the only people
who can use props.
Here's an example of
the use of a prop, also
due to Seymour Papert.
He was talking about how
it's important to look
at the problem in the
right way, and here's
an example that not only teaches
that, but makes it possible
for you to embarrass
your friends
in mechanical engineering.
So here's what you do.
Take a bicycle wheel, and
you start it spinning.
And then you put some
torque on the axle,
or equivalently, you
blow on the edge.
And the issue is,
does it go that way,
or does it go that way?
Now, the mechanical engineers
will immediately say, oh, yes,
I see-- right hand screw wheel.
And they'll put their
fingers in this position,
but forget exactly how
to align their fingers
with the various
aspects of the problem.
And so it's usually the
case that they get it right
with about a 50% probability.
So their very fancy
education gets them up
to the point where they're
equivalent to flipping a coin.
But it doesn't
have to be that way
because you can think about the
problem a little differently.
So here's what you do.
You take some duct
tape, and you put it
around the part of
the wheel like that.
And now, you start to think
about, not the whole wheel,
but just a little piece that's
underneath the duct tape.
So here, that piece comes
rolling over the top,
and at this point, you blow
on it with a puff of air.
Forgetting about the
rest of the wheel,
what happens to that
little piece that's
under the duct tape?
It must want to go
that way because you
banged on it like that.
It's already going
down like that.
And what about the next piece?
Same thing.
Next piece?
Same thing.
So the only thing
that can happen
is that the wheel
goes over like that.
And so now, you'll
never wonder again
because you're thinking about
the problem in the right way,
and it's demonstrated
by the use of a prop.
You can try this
after we're done.
Another example I
like to remember
is one from when
I was taking 8.01.
Alan Lazarus was the
instructor at the time,
and he was talking about the
conservation of energy, kinetic
and potential.
And there was a long wire in
a ceiling in 26-100 attached
to a much bigger
steel ball, but one--
not one like this.
And Lazarus took the ball up
against the wall like this.
He put his head flat against
the wall to steady himself,
and then he let go,
and the pendulum
takes many seconds
to go over and back,
and then gently
kisses Lazarus's nose.
And so you have many
seconds to think,
this guy really believes in
the conservation of energy.
Do not try this at home.
The problem is that, the
first time you do this,
you may not just let go.
There's a natural
human tendency to push.
So that's a little bit
on a subject of props.
It's interesting.
Whenever surveys are taken,
students always say more chalk,
less PowerPoint.
And why would that be?
Props are also very effective.
Why would that be?
I'll give you my lunatic
fringe view on this.
It has to do with what I would
call empathetic mirroring.
When you're sitting up there
watching me write on the board,
all those little mirror neurons
in your head, I believe,
become actuated, and
you can feel yourself
writing on the blackboard.
And even more so, when I talk
about this steel ball going
that way and this way,
you can feel the ball
as if you were me, and you
can't do that with a slide.
You can't do it with a picture.
You need to see it in
the physical world.
That's why I think that--
oh, yes, of course, it's--
there are speed
questions involved, too,
that have to be separated out.
But I think the
empathetic mirroring
is why props and the use of a
blackboard are so effective.
Well, let's see-- oh, yes,
there is one more thing
by way of the
tools, and that has
to do with the use of slides.
I repeat, I think they're
for exposing ideas,
not for teaching ideas, but
that's what we do in a job talk
or conference talk--
expose ideas.
We don't teach them.
So let me tell you a little
bit about my views on that.
I remember, once, I was in
Terminal A at Logan Airport.
I'd just come back from a
really miserable conference,
and the flight was
really horrible.
It was one of those that feels
like an unbalanced washing
machine.
And for the only
time in my life,
I decided to stop on my way to
my car and have a cup of coffee
and relax a little bit.
And as I was there for a few
minutes, someone came up to me
and said, are you
Professor Winston?
I think so, I said.
I don't know.
I guess I was
trying to be funny.
In any event, he said,
I'm on my way to Europe
to give a job talk.
Would you mine
critiquing my slides?
Not at all, I said.
You have too many, and
they have too many words.
How did you know, he
said, thinking perhaps I
had seen a talk of his before.
I hadn't.
My reply was, because
it's always true.
There are always too many
slides, always too many words.
So let me show you some extreme
examples of how not to use
slides.
Well, for this demonstration,
I need to be way over here
and when I get over here, then
I can start to say things like,
one of the things you shouldn't
do is read your transparencies.
People in your audience
know how to read,
and reading will
just annoy them.
Also, you should
be sure that you
have only a few words
on each transparency,
and that the words
are easy to read.
And I hope I'm driving
you crazy because I'm
committing all kinds of
crimes, the first of which
is that there are too
many words on the slide.
Second of which is,
I'm way over there,
and the slide's way over there.
So you get into this
tennis match feeling
of shifting back and
forth between the slide
and the speaker.
You want the slides to
be condiments to what
you're saying, not the main
event or the opposite way
around.
So how can we fix this?
Step number one is to get
rid of the background junk.
That's always distraction.
Step number two is to
get rid of the words.
When I reduced the
words to these,
then everything I
read a previous time,
I'm not licensed to say,
because it's not on the slide.
I'm not reading
my slides anymore,
but I'm saying what was
written on the slides
in a previous example.
So what else can we
do to simplify this?
Well, we can get
rid of the logos.
We don't need them.
Simplification.
What else can we do?
Get rid of the title.
Now, I want to talk to you
about some rules for slide
preparation.
I'm telling you the title.
It doesn't have to be up there.
By reducing the number
of words on the slide,
I'm allowing you to pay
more attention to me
and less to what's
written on the slide.
I mentioned it before--
we-- have only one language
processor, and we can
either use it to read stuff
or to listen to the speaker.
And so if we have too
many words on the slide,
it forces people in the
audience to read this stuff
and not listen.
A student of mine did an
experiment a few years ago.
He taught some students some
web-based programming ideas.
Half the information was on
slides, he said the other half,
and then for a control
group, he reversed it.
And the question was,
what did the subjects--
that is to say, freshmen
at his fraternity--
what did the subjects
remember best, what he said,
or what they read on the slide?
And the answer is, what
they read on the slide.
When their slides have
a lot of material on it,
they don't pay attention
to the speaker.
In fact, in the after action
report, one of the subjects
said, I wish you
hadn't talked so much.
It was distracting.
Well, the last item
is eliminate clutter.
Here's some clutter.
No reason even
for those bullets.
So the too many words
problem is a consequence
of a crime Microsoft
has committed
by allowing you to use
fonts that are too small.
So you should all have
a sample slide like this
that you can use to determine
what the minimum font
size is that's easily legible.
[INAUDIBLE],, what do
you think of those?
AUDIENCE: Which size is right?
PATRICK WINSTON: What's that?
AUDIENCE: Did you ask
me what size is right?
PATRICK WINSTON:
Yeah, minimum, maybe.
AUDIENCE: 40 or 50.
PATRICK WINSTON: Yeah,
he says 40 or 50.
I think that's about right.
35 is beginning to get
too small, not necessarily
because you can't read it,
but because you're probably
using it to get too
many words on the slide.
What other crimes do we have?
Well, we have the
laser pointer crime.
And for that-- in
the old days, when
we didn't have laser
pointers, we used wooden ones,
and people would go waving
these things around.
And pretty soon it became almost
like a baton twirling contest,
so here's what I
recommended in the old days
for dealing with
this kind of pointer.
This is an example
of use of a prop.
Jim Glass up there saw this
talk about 20 years ago,
and said, oh, yeah,
I remember that talk.
That's the one where
you broke the pointer.
It's amazing how
props tend to be
the things that are remembered.
Well, now, we don't have
physical pointers anymore.
We've got laser pointers.
It's a wonder more people aren't
driven into epileptic fits
over this sort of stuff.
Well, here's what
tends to happen.
Look at that.
It's a lovely recursive picture,
and I can become part of it
by putting that laser beam
right on the back of my head
up there.
Then what do you see?
You see the back of my head.
I have no eye contact,
no engagement, nothing.
I was sitting with a student
watching a talk one day,
and she said, you know
what, we could all leave,
and he wouldn't know.
So what happens when
you use a laser pointer?
You can't use a laser pointer
without turning your head
and pointing it at something,
and when you do that,
you lose contact
with the audience.
You don't want to do it.
So what do you do if you
need to identify something
in your image,
and you don't want
to point at it with a laser?
This is what you do.
Put a little arrow
on there and say,
now, look at that guy at
the end of arrow number one.
You don't need to have
laser pointer to do that.
The too-heavy
crime-- when people
ask me to review
a presentation, I
ask them to print it out
and lay it out on a table.
When they do that, it's easy
to see whether the talk is
too heavy, too much
text, not enough air, not
enough white space,
not enough imagery.
This is a good example
of such a talk--
way too heavy.
The presenter has taken
advantage of a small font sizes
to get as much on the
slide as he wanted.
Lots of other crimes here,
but the too-heavy-- the fact
that it's too heavy is what
I wanted to illustrate.
So here, by contrast,
another talk--
one I gave a few years ago.
It's not-- it wasn't a
deeply technical talk,
but I show it to you
because there's air in it.
It's mostly pictures of things.
There are three or four
slides that have text on them,
but when I come to those, I give
the audience time to read them.
And they're there
because they might have
some historical significance.
The first slide with
a lot of text on it
is an extraction from the 1957--
from the proposal for the 1957
AI conference at Dartmouth.
Extraordinarily
interesting event,
and that historical
extraction from the proposal
helps drive that point home.
What else have we got here?
Oh, yeah, your vocabulary
word for the day.
This is an hapax legomenon.
What that means is, this
is the kind of slide
you can get away with exactly
once in your presentation.
This is a slide that got
some currency some years
ago because it shows the
complexity of governing
in Afghanistan by showing
how impossibly complex it is.
It's something you in the
audience can't understand,
and that's the point, but
you can't have many of these.
You can have one per work,
one per presentation,
one per paper, one per book.
That's what hapax legomenon is,
and this is an example of it.
Well, I've shown
you some crimes.
So you might be asking, do
these crimes actually occur?
So they do.
[LAUGHTER]
There's the hands in
the pockets crime.
There's a crime and time
and place selection here.
This is how you get
to the Bartos Theater.
First thing you do is
you get on these steps
over at the Media Lab, then you
cross this large open space,
then you turn right
down this corridor.
[LAUGHTER]
At this point,
whenever I go in there,
I wonder if there are torture
implements around the corner.
[LAUGHTER]
And then when you
get in there, you
get into this
dark, gloomy place.
So it's well named when they
call it the Bartos Theater
because it's a place where
you can watch a movie,
but it's not a place
where you can give a talk.
Now, on a subject
of does it happen,
here's a talk I attended
a while back in Stata.
Notice that the speaker is
far away from the slides.
Speaker's using a laser pointer.
And you say to me, well,
what's happening here?
It's, by the way,
the 80th - 80th!
slide of the presentation.
Notice that it extends
with the words,
this is the first of
10 conclusions slides.
[LAUGHTER]
So what's the audience reaction?
That's the sponsor
of the meeting.
[LAUGHTER]
He's reading his email.
This is the co-sponsor
of the meeting.
He's examining the lunch menu.
[LAUGHTER]
What about this person?
This person looks like
he's paying attention,
but just because
it's a still picture.
If you were to see a
video, what you would see
is something like this [YAWNS].
[LAUGHTER]
So yeah, it does happen.
Well, now, that's a
quick review of tools.
Now, I want to talk
about some special cases.
We could talk a little
bit about the informing
or to say another way,
doing what I'm doing now.
But I'll just say a
few words about that.
In that kind of
presentation, you
want to start with a promise
like I did for this hour
that we're going through now.
And then it comes
to the question
of how do you inspire people?
I've given this talk
for a long time,
and a few years ago,
our department chairman
said, would you please give
this talk to a new faculty,
and be sure to emphasize what
it takes to inspire students.
And strangely, I hadn't thought
about that question before.
So I started a survey.
I'd talked to some of my
incoming freshmen advisees,
and I talked to senior
faculty and everything
in between about how
they've been inspired.
What I found from
the incoming freshmen
is that they were inspired by
some high school teacher who
told them they could do it.
What I found in
the senior faculty,
they were inspired
by someone who
helped them see a
problem in a new way.
And what I saw from everyone
is that they were inspired when
someone exhibited passion
about what they were doing,
exhibited passion about
what they were doing.
So that's one way
to be inspiring.
It's easy for me because I
do artificial intelligence.
And how can you
not be interested
in artificial intelligence?
[LAUGHTER]
I mean, if you're not interested
in artificial intelligence,
you're probably not interested
in interesting things.
So when I'm lecturing in my
AI class, it's natural for me
to talk about what
I think is cool
and how exciting
some new idea is.
So that's the kind of
expression of passion
that makes a difference
while informing with respect
to this question of inspiring.
Oh, yeah and of course,
during this promise phase,
you can also express
how cool stuff is.
Let me give you an example of
a lecture that starts this way.
I'm talking about
resource allocation.
It's the same sort of stuff
you would think of when your--
it's the same sort
of ideas you would
need if you're allocating
aircraft to a flight schedule
or trying to schedule a
factory or something like that.
But the example
is putting colors
on the states in
the United States
without any bordering states
having the same color.
So here it goes.
This is what I show at the
beginning of the class.
This is a way of
doing that coloring.
And you might say, well, why
don't we wait till it finishes?
Would you like to do that?
No?
Well, we're not going
to wait till it finishes
because the sun will have
exploded and consumed the earth
before this program finishes.
[LAUGHTER]
But with a slight adjustment
to how the program works, which
I tell my students you will
understand in the next 50
minutes, this is what you get.
Isn't that cool?
You got to be
amazed by stuff that
takes a computation from
longer than the lifetime
of the solar system
into a few seconds.
So that's what I mean by
providing a promise upfront
and expressing some
passion about what
you're talking about.
Well, the last item
in this little block
here is it has to
do with what people
think that they do it at MIT.
You ask faculty what the
most important purpose is,
and they'll say, well, the
most important thing I do
is teach people how to think.
And then you say
oh, that's great.
How do you teach
people how to think?
Blank stare.
No one can quite
respond to that part,
that natural next question.
So how do you teach
people how to think?
Well, I believe that we
are storytelling animals.
And that we start
developing our story,
understanding and
manipulating skills
with fairy tales in
childhood and continue on
through professional schools
like law, business, medicine,
everything.
And we continue doing
that throughout life.
So if that is what
thinking is all about.
And we want to teach
people how to think,
you provide them with the
stories they need to know,
the questions they need to
ask about those stories,
mechanisms for
analyzing those stories,
ways of putting
stories together,
ways of evaluating how
reliable a story is.
And that's what I think you
need to do when you teach people
how to think.
But that's all about education.
And many of you here
are not necessarily
for that, but rather
for this part,
for persuading, which breaks
down into several categories,
oral exams, not shown,
shop talks, getting famous.
I won't say much about oral
exams other than the fact
that they used to be a lot
scarier than they are today.
In the old days,
reading the literature
in a foreign language
was a part of that.
And there was a
high failure rate.
And when you look back
on those failures,
the most usual reason for
people failing an oral exam
is failure to situate and
a failure to practice.
By situate, I mean,
it's important to talk
about your research in context.
This is a problem that's being
pursued all over the world.
There hasn't been any progress
before me in the past 30 years.
Everyone is looking
for a solution
because it will
have impact on so
many other things, such
situating and time and place
and feel.
And then as far as
practice is concerned, yes,
practice is important.
But that doesn't mean showing
your slides to the people
you share an with.
The problem with that is that if
people know what you're doing,
they will hallucinate
that there's
material in your
presentation that isn't there
if it isn't there.
A variation on the
scene, by the way,
is your faculty supervisor
is not a very good person
to help you debug a talk
because they, in fact, know
what you're doing.
And they will, in
fact, hallucinate
there's material in your
presentation that isn't there.
So you need to get together
with some friends who
don't know what you're
doing and have them--
well, you start the
practice session by saying,
if you can't make me cry,
I won't value as a friend
anymore.
[LAUGHTER]
And then when you get to
the faculty on a oral exam,
it will be easy.
You see, difficulty--
the amount of flak
you'll get from somebody
is proportional to age.
The older somebody
is, the more they
understand where they
are in the world.
But the young people are
trying to show the old people
how smart they are, so
it's subtly vicious.
So whenever you
have an opportunity
to have an examining
committee that's
full of people with gray
hair, that's what you want.
Well, that's just a word
or two about something
I haven't listed here.
Let's get into the
subject of job talks.
So I was sitting in a bar
many years ago in San Diego.
I was a member of the
Navy Science Board,
and I was sitting with a couple
of my colleagues on the board
Delores Etter from the
University of Colorado.
She made me so jealous I could
spit because she'd written 21
books, and I'd only written 17.
And then the other
one was Bill Weldon
from the University of Texas.
He was an electromagnetism
guy, and he
knew how to use rail guns to
drive steel rods through tank
armor.
These were interesting people.
So I said, what do you look
for in a faculty candidate?
And within one
microsecond, Delores
said, they have
to show us they've
got some kind of vision, quickly
followed by Bill who said,
they have to show us that
they've done something.
Oh, that sounds good, I said.
And then I said
to them, how long
does a candidate have to
establish these two things?
What do you think?
Well, compare your
answer to theirs.
Five minutes.
So if you haven't
expressed your vision,
if you haven't told people that
you've done something in five
minutes, you've already lost.
So you have to be
able to do that.
And let me just mention a couple
of things in that connection.
Here, the vision is
in part, a problem
that somebody cares about and
something new in your approach.
So the problem is
understanding the nature
of human intelligence.
And the approach
is asking questions
about what makes us
different from chimpanzees
and Neanderthals.
Is it merely a
matter of quantity,
or we're just a little bit
smarter in some continuous way?
Or do we have something
that's fundamentally different
that chimpanzees don't have
and Neanderthals either?
And the answer is yes, we
do have something different.
We are symbolic creatures.
And because we're
symbolic creatures,
we can build
symbolic descriptions
of relations and events.
We can string them
together and make stories.
And because we can make stories,
that's what makes us different.
So that's my stump speech.
That's how I start
most of my talks
on my own personal research.
How do you express the notion
that you've done something?
By listing the steps that need
to be taken in order to achieve
the solution to that problem.
You don't have to have
done all of those steps.
But you can say here's
what needs to be done.
An example, here's
what needs to be done.
We need to specify
some behavior.
We need to enumerate
the constraints that
make it possible to
deal with that behavior.
We have to implement a system
because we're engineers,
and we don't think that
we've understood something
unless we can build it.
And we've built such
a system, and we're
about to demonstrate
it to you today.
That would be an example of
enumerating a series of steps
needed to realize the vision.
So then blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then you conclude by--
you conclude by enumerating
your contributions.
It's kind of mirror
of these steps.
And it helps to establish
that you've done something.
So that's a kind of
general purpose framework
for doing a technical talk.
Now, only a few more
things left to do today.
Getting famous is the
next item on our agenda
because once you've
got the job, you
need to think a
little bit about how
you're going to be
recognized for what you do.
So oh, first of all, why should
you care about getting famous?
I thought about
this in connection
with a fundraising
event I attended
once, a fundraising
event for raising money
to save Venice from going under
water and having all of its art
destroyed.
Anyway, I was sitting here,
and JC was sitting here.
That was Julia, the
late Julia Child.
And as the evening wore
on, more and more people
would come up and ask Julia
to autograph something
or express a feeling that
she had changed their life.
And it just happened
over and over again.
So eventually, I turned to
Julia, and I said, Ms. Child,
is it fun to be famous?
And she thought about
it for a second.
And she said, you
get used to it.
[LAUGHTER]
But you know what occured to me?
You never get used
to being ignored.
So it's-- here's a
way to think about it.
Your ideas are
like your children.
And you don't want them to
go into the world in rags.
So what you want
to do is to be sure
that you have these
techniques, these mechanisms,
these thoughts about how to
present ideas that you have so
that they're recognized for
the value that is in them.
So that's why it's a legitimate
thing to concern yourself
with packaging.
Now, how do you get remembered?
Well, there's something I
like to call Winston's star.
And every one of the items
I'm about to articulate starts
with an S. So if you want
your presentation ideas
to be remembered, one of
the things you need to do
is to make sure that you have
some kind of symbol associated
with your work.
So this arch example is
actually from my PhD thesis
many, many years ago.
And in the course of
my work at that time,
this work on arch learning
became mildly famous,
and I didn't know why.
It was only many years
later that I realized
that that work accidentally
had all of the elements
on this star.
So the first element is that
there was a kind of symbol.
It's the arch itself.
Next thing you need is
some kind of slogan,
a kind of phrase that
provides a handle on the work.
And in this case, the phrase
was one shot learning.
And it was one shot
because the program I wrote
learned something definite
from every example that
was presented to us.
So in going from a model
based on this configuration
to something that isn't an arch
base on that configuration,
the program learned that
it has to be on top,
one shot learning.
So that's a symbol, slogan.
And now we need a surprise.
Yeah, the surprise is you
don't need a million examples
of something to learn.
You can do it with
one example if you're
smart enough to make use of
that example appropriately.
So that was the surprise.
You can learn something
definite from each example.
Next item was a salient idea.
Now, when I say salient
idea, I don't mean important.
What I mean is an
idea that sticks out.
Some theses, funnily enough,
have too many good ideas,
and you don't know what it's all
about because which one is it?
So you need an idea
that sticks out.
And the idea that stuck out here
was the notion of a near miss.
You see, this is not an arch,
but it doesn't miss by much.
So it's a near miss.
And finally, you need
to tell the story
of how you did it, how it
works, why it's important.
So that's a bit on how to
not so much get famous,
but how to ensure that
your work is recognized.
Well, we're almost
finished because now we're
down to this last item,
which is how to stop.
And when we come
to that, there's
a question of all right,
well, what is the final slide?
And what are the final words?
So for the final
slide, let me give you
some examples of possibilities.
How about this one?
Well, you might see that
slide and think to yourself,
there are 1,000 faculty at MIT.
Nice piece of work,
but not so much,
but it's only a tiny piece of
work if you divide by 1,000.
So when you show a whole
gigantic list of collaborators
at the end of a talk,
it's a kind of let down
because it suggests
that nobody knows.
Well, did you do
anything significant?
Now, you've got to recognize
your collaborators, right?
So where do you do that?
Not on the last slide,
on the first slide.
All this was on the first slide.
These are the
collaborators, so you don't
want to put them at the end.
You don't want a
slide like this.
How about this one?
This is the worst possible
way to end a talk.
[LAUGHTER]
Because this slide can be
up there for 20 minutes.
I've seen it happen.
It squanders real estate.
It squanders an opportunity
to tell people who you are.
It's just--
What about this one?
I often see it.
I never see anybody
write it down.
Also, it wastes opportunity.
Oh my God, even worse.
All of these lines
do nothing for you.
They waste an opportunity
for you to tell people--
to leave people with what you--
with who you are.
Well, what about this?
Is this a good one?
It might seem so at first,
but here's the problem.
If you say these
are my conclusions,
these are perfectly
legitimate conclusions
that nobody cares about.
What they care about
is what you have done.
And that's why your
final slide should
have this label, contributions.
It's a mirror of what I said
over there about how job talks
ought to be like a sandwich.
And the final slide,
the one that's
up there while people are
asking questions and filing out,
it ought to be the one that
has your contributions on it.
Here's an example from
my own stump speech.
Yeah, this is what
I talk about a lot.
Yes, here are the things
that I typically demonstrate.
And I wait for
people to read it.
And the final element there is
this is what we get out of it,
so that's an example of
a contribution slide.
All right, now, what
about the other part?
You got your final
slide up there.
It's a contribution slide.
Somehow you have to tell
people you're finished.
So let's see it, check
out a few possibilities.
One thing you could
do in the final words
is you could tell a joke.
It's OK.
By the time you're done,
people have adjusted themselves
to your voice parameters.
They're ready for a joke.
I was sitting in another bar,
this time in Austin, Texas
with a colleague of
mine named Doug Lenat.
And Doug's a fantastic speaker.
And so I said to
Doug, Doug, you're
a fantastic speaker,
what's your secret?
And he said, oh, I always
finish with a joke,
and that way, people think
they've had fun the whole time.
[LAUGHTER]
So yeah, a joke will
work down there.
How about this one?
Thank you.
I don't recommend it.
It's a weak move.
You will not go to
hell if you conclude
your talk by saying thank
you, but it's a weak move,
and here's why.
When you say thank you, even
worse, thank you for listening,
it suggests that
everybody has stayed
that long out of politeness and
that they had a profound desire
to be somewhere else.
But they're so polite,
they stuck it out.
And that's what you're
thanking them for.
So once wild
applause has started,
you can mouth a thank
you, and there's
nothing wrong with that.
But the last thing you do
should not be saying thank you.
Now, you say to me, well,
doesn't everybody say
thank you?
Well, what everybody does is
not necessarily the right thing.
And I like to illustrate
how some talks can
end without saying thank you.
I like to draw from
political speeches,
but the ones that I've heard
recently aren't so good, so--
[LAUGHTER]
So I'm going to have to
go go back a little bit.
So here is Governor Christie.
He gave the Republican
keynote address one year.
This is the end of his talk.
Let's see what he does.
[APPLAUSE]
CHRIS CHRISTIE: And together,
everybody, together.
We will stand up once again
for American greatness
for our children
and grandchildren.
God bless you, and
God bless America.
[APPLAUSE]
PATRICK WINSTON: So that's a
classic benediction ending.
God bless you,
God bless America.
Now, I don't want to
be partisan about this.
So I think I'd better switch
to the keynote address
in the Democratic Convention.
It was delivered that year
by Bill Clinton, who knows
something about how to speak.
[APPLAUSE]
BILL CLINTON: If that
is what you want,
if that is what you
believe, you must vote,
and you must re-elect
President Barack Obama.
God bless you, and
God bless America.
[APPLAUSE]
[LAUGHTER]
PATRICK WINSTON:
Now, watch this.
Let's go back a little
bit and redo it.
What I want you to see
is that at one point,
he seems to be almost pressing
his lips together, forcing
himself not to say thank you.
Then there's another place
where he does a little salute.
So watch for those
this time around.
[APPLAUSE]
BILL CLINTON: If that
is what you want,
if that is what you
believe, you must vote,
and you must re-elect
President Barack Obama.
God bless you., and
God bless America.
[APPLAUSE]
PATRICK WINSTON: That's
where he's pursing his lips.
[LAUGHTER]
There's the salute.
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah, I think
that's pretty good.
Now, what are we gonna
take away from this?
Well, I suppose I could conclude
this talk by saying God bless
you, and God bless the
Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, but it
might not work so well.
But what you can
get out of this is
you don't have to say thank you.
There are other
things you can do.
And it's interesting that over
time, people figure this out,
and there's some stock
ways of ending things.
So in the Catholic church,
and the good old Latin mass,
it ended with ite
missa est, which
translates approximately
to OK, the mass is over,
you can go home now.
[LAUGHTER]
And of course, at
musical concerts,
you know that it's time to clap
not at the end of the song,
but rather when the conductor
goes over and shakes hands
with the concert master.
Those are conventions that tell
you that the event is over.
So those are all
possibilities for here.
But one more
possibility, and that
is that you can
salute the audience.
And by that, I mean,
you can say something
about how much you value
your time at a place.
So I could say, well, it's
been great fun being here.
It's been fascinating to see
what you folks are doing here
at MIT.
I've been much
stimulated and provoked
by the kinds of questions
you've been asking,
it's been really great.
And I look forward
to coming back
on many occasions in the future.
So that salutes the audience.
You can do that.
Well, there it is.
You know what?
I'm glad you're here.
And the reason is
by being here, I
think you have demonstrated
an understanding
that how you present and how
you package your ideas is
an important thing.
And I salute you for that.
[LAUGHTER] And I suggest that
you come back again and bring
your friends.
[APPLAUSE]
