Yes, "PowerPoint is Evil," says Edward R. Tufte in this 2003 essay that appeared in Wired. What kinds of logical arguments does he make? How does he try to appeal to his audience's emotions? Who is his audience? How sophisticated is his language? Is there anything missing from his essay that would make his argument stronger? Does he avoid mentioning anything that would make his argument weaker? Do the visuals support what the text says? Who cares about this topic? Who is Edward R. Tufte?
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ReplyDeleteEdward R. Tufte tries to appeal to his reader's emotions by comparing powerpoint users to a bad drug. He says that they're boring and stupid, and no one wants to be boring or stupid. He wrote this article to criticize a powerpoint that Nasa made for the Columbia disaster. His audience is more of the business-type people who use powerpoint a lot in presentations. The way that he starts out (giving us side effects) it seems like he's going to be giving us all of the bad things about powerpoints. His language isn't that sophisticated because everybody can understand it so it's not like you need a PH.D to understand what he's saying. For his argument he could have gotten other peoples' opinions except for his own. He could have used actual statistics or facts for his argument also. He left out the fact that people can have short attention spans when listening to presentations, especially when the information is boring. The visuals support what the text says because its saying that people clutter their powerpoints with a bunch of junk that no one cares about. People who care about this powerpoint are most likely people who use powerpoint for business type things. Edward R. Tufte is an American statistician and professor at Yale University. He received a BA and MS in statistics from Stanford and he worked at Princeton. He also writes, designs, and self-publish his own books on analytical design.
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Edward R. Tufte is a professor at Yale and has written many books on the use of charts and graphics. He is considered an expert in the field, he has written books on the subject. He has publicly criticized NASA for their use of Power point in relation to the Columbia disaster. He wrote about that in a full-page sidebar.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who uses PowerPoint cares about this topic, students, teachers, professors, business people, and of course Microsoft. So many people use it in his or her every day life if it really were hindering the spread of knowledge instead of facilitating it than everyone who uses it would want to know.
Hr applies to his audience with stories of cancer, prescriptions, schools, and businesses. Everyone has a connection to these institutions so we are all invested. His logical argument is that you only have to write a few words, so it is making students lazy. As well as too many slides become boring and systematic. His audience is everyone.
His language was for people with about a high school education, there were some more advanced words. He used his language to key in on concepts to curve his argument. He also finds a way to use examples that people are concerned about and care about, cancer, children, and beauty products. He doesn't talk about the speaker’s responsibility to fill in the blanks. Should have used a more statistical point of few, been smarter.
He avoids mentioning the other side of the argument, he should have tried to take their side and show why they are wrong. The visuals do help him, he shows Stalin giving a PowerPoint and the audience questioning it. His good/bad chart shows how out of control charts are, he wants just the information not the fill.
Edward Tufte was a professor at Yale University who studied statistics. His argument about Powerpoint being evil was not backed by factual information. By mentioning the use of bulleted lists by IBM and the Military, he was weakening his point of view. When he posted it to Wired he was not taking his audience into consideration. The people who read Wired are technical people who would probably know how to use Powerpoint. He only talked about one side of the argument; he did not have any credible information to back up his opinion.
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Edward R. Tufte is a professor of political and computer science at Yale University. Tufte states that PowerPoint presentations are mainly used for the format rather than for the content. He brought about the depiction of cancer rate on PowerPoint presentation. He indicates that it simply confuses and trivializes the content for the reader.
ReplyDeleteHe targets this subject at superintendents, teachers, parents, students, and maybe even the School Board. Mostly, he wants teachers to realize how stupid he believes Powerpoint assignments are. He wants everyone to know how it is a waste of a chance at knowledge. Instead of creating a few dumb ten word slides, why not write an essay?
He is making use of different truthful data and graphs to persuade readers his point in the writing. His data and graphs help relate that information to what he is saying to the readers in his writing.
His writing is very sophisticated. He uses intelligent words and vocabulary. He used good and detailed examples throughout the reading. He definitely know what he is speaking about. He also knows what he wants to say and gets the point across.
He avoids mentioning the fact that most teachers use PowerPoint to help their students memorize their essay, with use of visual aid. These PowerPoint slides are used as a note card or reminder.
By: Brooke McNulty, Thomas Czaja, and Dzhovid Kamolov
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ReplyDeleteEdward Rolf Tufte was born in 1942 in Kansas City, Missouri.. He received a BA and MS in statistics from Stanford University and a PhD in political science from Yale. He was then hired from Princeton University as an American statistician and professor Emeritus of statistics, information design, and interface design, and political economy. In 1975 while at Princeton he developed a set of readings and lectures on statistical graphics, which he further developed in joint seminars. This course information became the structure for his first book. Which was a hit. In 2003 he came out with "The Powerpoint is Evil."
In his article, "The PowerPoint is Evil" his tone was angry. He feels very strong about his opinion and he isn't shy to voice how he feels. The main reasons he didn't like Microsoft PowerPoint are: it is used to guide and reassure a presenter, rather than to enlighten the audience; it has unhelpfully simplistic tables and charts, resulting from the low resolution of computer displays; the outliner causes ideas to be arranged in an unnecessarily deep hierarchy itself subverted by the need to restate the hierarchy on each side; enforcement of the audience's linear progression through that hierarchy (whereas with handouts, readers could browse and relate items at their leisure); poor typography and chart layout, from presenters who are poor designers and who use poorly designed templates and default settings; and simplistic thinking from ideas being squashed in bulleted lists and stories with beginning, middle, and end being turned into a collection of disparate, loosely disguised points. This may present an image of objectivity and neutrality that people associate with science, technology, and "bullet points".
In "The Power Point is Evil," Edward Rolf Tufte presents multiple logical arguments that really will make some people think twice about Power Point. He states that it is punishing it's audience and makes the information seem less important; that it is more of a format battle than a content battle and more and likely becomes a sales pitch. Power Point also makes the presenter seem so much more dominant over the audience. He also says that putting multiple tables on the Power Point don't allow the audience to compare the charts. In school, Edward Rolf Tufte believes that it is letting students off easy, that students aren't doing enough work because they are only allowed 10 words on a slide. The strongest argument that Edward Rolf Tufte presented in "The Power Point is Evil" was that with so much stacked info on too many slides it becomes hard to understand the information and relationships between the information. Through these arguments Edward Rolf Tufte appeals to many emotions such as the "how would you feel" when talking about the children being let off easy. "How would they feel if your students weren't learning much in school?" He also uses the word stupidity a lot which hits home to many people because they do not want to seem "stupid" because they are using Power Point. No one wants to be slow, lazy and stupid. He wrote this to appeal to people who use power point, but more directly hits the higher educated people such as teachers and business men and women.
I believe the author made some valuable points but he could have made it much more interesting by adding some outside perspectives. I also think he left out the importance of power points when it comes to presenting ideas to a large group of people or when trying to make a simple argument to a problem. Edward R Taft is a professor from Yale university where he taught many different subjects in the relation to design and ideas. He has also wrote seven books and many articles. Most of his writings, including this one, are more wrote towards those involved in the English department, journalists, or reports. He uses his writings to fight a certain point or explain his opinion on certain topics.
We understand his argument, but his arguments tend to blame PowerPoint itself rather than the people that use it. His audience is likely a tech-savvy one that (he hopes) has been through quite a few boring, long PowerPoint presentations. His language is elegant, but simple and easy to understand. He was very focused on the software failure, rather than the human failure in using the program. Corporations, Universities, Government organizations, and anyone who's sat through a PowerPoint understands this issue. Edward Tufte is a Yale university professor.
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