This primer has a lot of advice about how to give a good presentation (via The Browser).  Much of it I agree with.  Especially these

  1. No bullet points
  2. Don’t use the slides to remind yourself what to say
  3. Don’t read your slides
  4. Very few words on each slide

On point 4, I remember Bill Zame once telling me that each slide should have no more than a single thought on it.  I have used that advice ever since.  The most impressive single slide I have ever seen was in a job market talk given by Luis Rayo where his slide had exactly one symbol on it, right in the middle.  (One quibble, the font was too small.)

I disagree strongly however with the suggestion of replacing words with pictures. Getting rid of extraneous words is good, replacing them with extraneous pictures is bad.  Unless the picture is a diagram that conveys the ideas better than spoken words can, leave it out. Coincidentally using comical pictures is a common practice in computer science talks, at least those that I have seen.  The writer of this manifesto is apparently a computer scientist.

Here is an example of a diagram that conveys ideas better than spoken words can, from my talk on Kludged.

flatfish