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  • 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]

PATRICK WINSTON: The Uniform Code of Military Justice

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A2 初級

帕特里克-溫斯頓的《如何說話 (How To Speak by Patrick Winston)

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    林宜悉 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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