NYTimes, CAIB, Tufte: PowerPoint Makes You Dumb

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

From: Joseph Lorenzo Hall <jhall () SIMS Berkeley EDU>
Subject: NYTimes, CAIB, Tufte: PowerPoint Makes You Dumb
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>

PowerPoint Makes You Dumb
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/14/magazine/14POWER.html

[...]

PowerPoint is the world's most popular tool for presenting
information. There are 400 million copies in circulation, and almost
no corporate decision takes place without it. But what if PowerPoint
is actually making us stupider?

This year, Edward Tufte -- the famous theorist of information
presentation -- made precisely that argument in a blistering screed
called The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint. In his slim 28-page
pamphlet, Tufte claimed that Microsoft's ubiquitous software forces
people to mutilate data beyond comprehension. For example, the low
resolution of a PowerPoint slide means that it usually contains only
about 40 words, or barely eight seconds of reading. PowerPoint also
encourages users to rely on bulleted lists, a ''faux analytical''
technique, Tufte wrote, that dodges the speaker's responsibility to
tie his information together. And perhaps worst of all is how
PowerPoint renders charts. Charts in newspapers like The Wall Street
Journal contain up to 120 elements on average, allowing readers to
compare large groupings of data. But, as Tufte found, PowerPoint users
typically produce charts with only 12 elements. Ultimately, Tufte
concluded, PowerPoint is infused with ''an attitude of commercialism
that turns everything into a sales pitch.''

[...]



(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes.)

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Joseph Lorenzo Hall                    http://pobox.com/~joehall/
Graduate Student             blog: http://pobox.com/~joehall/nqb/

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