How not to use the results from a survey

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the SlideModel web site there is an article from April 29, 2021 titled How to Become Great in Public Speaking: Presenting Best Practices. A section titled The Fear of Public Speaking begins with the following paragraph:

 

“Despite the fact that most of us love chatting, far fewer feel comfortable talking in front of larger audiences. In fact 75% of Americans have some level of public speaking anxiety. Many also feel frantic about going on the stage.”

 

Where does this article link? It is to another article posted at the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) by Raja Farhan in the Journal of Education and Educational Development (June 2017  Volume 4 No. 1 pages 94 to 110) titled Anxiety Level in Students of Public Speaking: Causes and Remedies. But that article has nothing to do with Americans.

 

When evaluating a survey, we need to ask a bunch of questions:

 

When was the survey done?

Who was in the sample? Were they chosen randomly, so results can be generalized to represent a population? Or, was it a “convenience sample” meaning they just surveyed whoever showed up.

How many people were in there?

Are there detailed results or just an ‘executive summary’?

Did everyone answer a question yes or no, or were there some ‘don’t knows’?

How were the genders distributed? What is the margin of error?

 

Farhan’s survey was done on a “convenience sample” of only fifty computer science undergraduate students at a private business school in Karachi, Pakistan. If you wanted to generalize the results, then you would need to take a random sample. Also, the genders for that sample are not indicated.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Results from that survey are shown above via a bar chart. For such a small sample size the margin of error is large – 12.6%. (A typical sample size of a thousand will have a more reasonable margin of error of 2.8%).

 

Also, reportedly 75% said they had a fear of public speaking - which makes little sense. For a sample of fifty there only can be even-numbered percentages spaced 2% apart. So, at face value the two 75% values and the 95% value are wrong. To get 75% we would need two ‘don’t knows’ resulting in 36/48. To get 95% we would need six ‘don’t knows’ resulting in 42/44.

 

The statue in Paris with a facepalm gesture was adapted from this image at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Doesn’t everybody sell soda crackers packed in stacks like this?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The National Biscuit Company (Nabisco) has for over a century, as is shown above in an ad for Uneeda Biscuit soda crackers from the February 1911 Woman’s Home Companion. Later for a pound box of Premium Saltine Crackers they used four single stacks. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But last month I bought a box of Mexican-made Gamesa Saladitas saltine crackers at the Grocery Outlet. As shown above, they instead had two silver mylar wrapped stacks with a two-by-four pattern!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On January 15, 2019 I had blogged about Why was a Nazi swastika on the ends of those cracker boxes? The Pacific Coast Biscuit Company had used a swastika before the Nazis. They were sued for trademark infringement. Color images comparing their Abetta Biscuit box with a Uneeda Biscuit box appeared on page 210 of the National Biscuit Company Trade Mark Litigation 1915 book, as shown above (with the spacing between them reduced).

 

An image with a stack of six saltines came from Wikimedia Commons.  

  

Are you speaking too quickly or too slowly?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe, maybe not. Your rate (or pace) in words per minute can be measured (perhaps automatically by an app like Orai). Is there a best, optimal, or ideal rate (an average)? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An article by Matt Ramsey at Ramsey Voice Studio on March 6, 2021 titled 10 Secrets to a remarkable speaking voice claims:

 

“The ideal speaking pace is around 120 words per minute, or two words a second.”

 

A post by Danish Dhamani at at the Orai Blog on August 17, 2020 titled Rate of speech: Definition, bonus tips, ideal rate, calculation instead claims:

 

“The accepted ideal rate of speech is around 140-160 words in a minute.”

 

I went back to my copy of the eighth edition (2004) of Stephen E. Lucas’s textbook, The Art of Public Speaking. On page 300 he discusses rate and his first paragraph says:

 

“Rate refers to the speed at which a person speaks. People in the U. S. usually speak at a rate between 125 and 150 words per minute, but there is no uniform rate for effective speechmaking. Daniel Webster spoke at roughly 90 words per minute, Franklin Roosevelt at 110, John Kennedy at 180. Martin Luther King opened his ’I Have a Dream’ speech at a pace of 92 words per minute and finished at 145. The best rate of speech depends on several things – the vocal attributes of the speaker, the mood she or he is trying to create, the composition of the audience, and the nature of the occasion.”

 

In her initial 2006 hard-cover 2006 version of her book The Female Brain, Louann Brizendine had outrageously claimed that:

 

“….girls speak faster on average—250 words per minute versus 125 for typical males.”     

 

Mark Liberman disputed that in his Language Log on August 7, 2006 in a post titled Sex and speaking rate. Amanda Schaffer discussed it in Slate on July 1, 2008 in an article titled Pick a little, talk a little.Brizendine removed that claim from the paperback version.

 

How fast do speakers give their exhaustively-rehearsed TED Talks? At his Six Minutes blog for November 12, 2012 Andrew Dlugan has a post titled What is the average speaking rate? that discusses nine of them. The range is from 133 to 188 words per minute with an average of 163. Another post on February 26, 2018 by Nick & Melissa Enge at their The Science of Speaking blog titled Original Research: The “Slow Down” Myth reports speech rates for the Top Ten TED talks as ranging from 156 to 214 words per minute, with an average of 176.

 

I looked at Google Books to find how long ago speaking rate was discussed. Way back in 1846 Isaac Pitman, the British inventor of shorthand, described it on page 9 of his book The Reporter: Or, Phonography Adapted to Verbatim Reporting: 

 

“The rate of utterance by public speakers is commonly reckoned thus: - From 80 to 100 words per minute is slow; from 100 to 140 is moderate, 120 being considered by reporters the average of public speaking; and from 140 to 200 is rapid. Instances have often occurred of phonographers writing at the rate of 170 words per minute on a new subject, and 200 when the subject was familiar.”   

 

In 1855 Roswell Chamberlain Smith, on page 82 of his book Smith’s Inductive Arithmetic and Federal Calculator, listed rates for the following famous speakers:

 

“Words spoken in one minute:

John C. Calhoun from 180 to 200

Daniel Webster from 80 to 110

Henry Clay from 130 to 160

Elihu Burnitt from 130 to 160

Wendell Phillips from 140 to 170

Ralph Waldo Emerson from 140 to 170

Rev. Dr. [Stephen H.] Tyng from 120 to 140

Henry Ward Beecher from 180 to 250

Gerritt Smith from 70 to 90

 

The facts in the above table were furnished by Andrew J. Graham, Editor and Publisher of the Universal Phonographer and author of the ‘Reporter’s Manual.’ “

 

An 1887 publication titled The Cosmopolitan Shorthander, Volume 8, says on page 224 that while:

 

”125 words per minute is the traditional English standard of public speaking, but there is no longer any doubt that this is decidedly below the rate of the average American speaker, of whose speed 150 words per minute is perhaps a truer estimate.”

 

A cartoon of a tortoise and a hare was adapted from images at Openclipart, as was a speedometer.

 

A good Table Topics question is not closed, and it is open-ended rather than wide open

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today’s Savage Chickens cartoon titled Bears or Crocodiles? applies to questions for Table Topics (the impromptu speaking portion of a Toastmasters club meeting). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Multiple choice questions are closed, and therefore are not good. On October 5, 2020 I had blogged about Tips for creating good Table Topics questions.

Creating wallpapers for Zoom virtual backgrounds

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Zoom it is possible to add a virtual background to replace the real one. You do not need to start with a  real green screen behind you. Where do you get backgrounds? Of course, Zoom has a web page about Zoom Virtual Backgrounds with links to a huge collection. I liked some at Wallpapers Wide, but a lot of them are distractingly busy.

 

Toastmasters International has a web page titled Toastmasters Zoom Virtual Background with a small assortment you can download as a zip file. A generic blue one is shown above, as is another which I recolored brown and titled for when I fill the Timer role in my club. That role is discussed in an article from the February 2021 Toastmaster magazine titled The Timer’s Toolkit. Why just blue or brown? The Timer might use green, yellow, and red backgrounds (downloaded at the Timer Zoom Backgrounds web page) in order to signal the speaker, so you should avoid those colors when you are not in that role. (I hold up timing cards rather than switch my background).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where else can you find simple backgrounds? Get out your camera or phone and look around at home. As shown above, I used the asphalt street, the concrete sidewalk, a wooden bookcase, and a shirt. You can use a paint or photo editing program to recolor or adjust brightness and contrast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You also can look around at a Creative Commons web site like Wikimedia Commons. I found a stone wall in Paris there, cropped it, and turned it gray. I found graph paper as well. I also found references there to an old book by Owen Jones titled The Grammar of Ornament, and downloaded the 1856 folio edition from the Internet Archive. When I perused his 112 color plates, I found a Pompeiian mosaic pattern on page 155 and an Arabian background on page 209. Then I used Photoshop Elements to crop and recolor them blue, and tiled them into wallpaper using Microsoft PowerPoint.   

 

A news release from Toastmasters International begins with a quotation that really is not from Mark Twain

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A quotation can be a powerful way to open an article or a speech. But if it isn’t real, then it just makes you look foolish. On May 5, 2021 there was a press release from Toastmasters International titled Toastmasters’ 5 Tips to Overcome the Fear of Public Speaking that opened with:

 

“As Mark Twain once said, ‘There are two types of speakers: those who get nervous and those who are liars.’ “

 

On May 12, 2020 I had blogged about Did Mark Twain really say there were just nervous speakers or liars? In that post I discussed how in March 2020 Garson O’Toole, who writes the Quote Investigator, had looked for the source for that statement but found he only could trace it back to 1998. I found a 1984 reference for a similar statement. If Twain really said it, then we should know exactly where and when. But we don’t.    

 

An earlier press release from Toastmasters on October 21, 2015 has another version:

 

“Mark Twain once said there are two types of speakers in the world: 1) the nervous and 2) liars.”

 

But that style with a 1) and a 2) doesn’t even sound like Mark Twain’s writing. The quote fairy didn’t wave her magic wand and make him say what we would like to believe.

 

My image was assembled from an image of a fairy at Wikimedia Commons, and an 1895 print of Twain at the Library of Congress.   

 

According to USDirect, chemtrails were the most searched for conspiracy theory in Idaho (and four other states) last year

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

USDirect is an authorized retailer for DIRECTV. On February 9, 2017 I blogged about More lame marketing from DIRECTV (my getting a phony holiday greeting card). On April 9, 2021 the USDirect web site has an article (or blog post) titled Every State’s Most-Searched Conspiracy Theory. Of course, the web site for the conspiracy-friendly late-night Coast to Coast AM radio show has an article  by Tim Burnall about it on April 21, 2021 titled Study determines most-searched conspiracy theory for each state. Eventually on April 16, 2021 Michael Deeds even wrote about it in the Idaho Statesman.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As is shown above via a bar chart, the New World Order was most commonly searched for – in 27 states. Chemtrails, Flat Earth, and New Coke all were the most searched conspiracy in five states each. Black Helicopters were most searched in another four states, and Lizard People were in two states. One state each had the Deepwater Horizon, the Moon Landing Was Fake, and that Tupac Is Alive.

 

Most searched for just means most looked at, and does not mean most believed. On March 7, 2015 I blogged about Is that Top Ten list from a real survey or just a glorified stack of web searches? And on June 27, 2020 I blogged about Contrails or chemtrails?

 

Ohio is an excellent example. Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon, was born and grew up there. Most Ohioans likely think Neil really was on the moon. At Space.com on July 19, 2019 there is an article by Elizabeth Howell titled Moon-landing hoax still lives on, 50 years after Apollo 11. But why?

    

My icon of a man in a tinfoil hat was adapted from an image by SkepticalScience at Wikimedia Commons.