Michele Bachmann pinned my bogometer!

In her Tea Party Express reply to the State of the Union address Representative Michele Bachmann showed us an Unemployment Rate bar chart. It supposedly compares the rate each year under the Bush and Obama administrations. The implied message obviously was that the recession and resulting misery was solely due to Obama. But, wait a minute. Why are there three blue bars for an administration that’s been in office for just two years? The opposite of credibility is bogosity. It’s measured with a bogometer, and “pinning my bogometer” means that you said something incredibly bogus.

 












The bar chart she used is shown above. (I have changed the background to purple for artistic reasons). When you see a bar chart with annual entries, they usually are the average for that year. The tiny legend at the bottom says that these data actually are just from the month of October (except for the bogus 2011 point from December 2010).  Going from 2008 to 2009 the rate jumped up by 3.5%. 

 











What was the monthly unemployment rate doing from 2008 to 2010? You can find the data and another very long bar chart on the Misery Index web site. A graph is shown above. Unemployment rose during 2008 under Bush, and it continued to rise in 2009 after Obama took over. Both Republicans and Democrats got us into this mess, and they will need to work together to get us out of it.

I don’t know why Bachmann chose to use monthly numbers from October in her chart. If she had chosen to use May or June the rate jump would have been 4.0% rather than 3.5%. (Using December it would have been a less impressive 2.6%).

Raised eyebrows and furrowed foreheads

On Tuesday evening I watched both President Obama’s State of the Union Address, and the Republican response by Representative Paul Ryan. Both speeches were well prepared and delivered. Ryan had the difficult job of following the President with a speech from the House Budget Committee room. 

What struck me even in the first minute of Paul Ryan’s speech was an unfortunate artifact of how he was televised. He was looking straight into the camera, probably at a teleprompter in front of the lens. The close-up view of him as a “talking head” emphasized his repeatedly raised eyebrows and furrowed forehead, as shown above. After two minutes I began concentrating more on his delivery than on his message, and even started counting the number of furrows. 

It reminded me of Kevin Trudeau, who lately does infomercials that peddle books about things that “they” don’t want you to know about (because they aren’t true). I don’t know how Kevin manages to keep his eyebrows raised that much (and that often). His messages and style have been parodied by Mad TV. Does anybody actually believe that Kevin traveled 5-million miles and interviewed over 5000 "real" doctors in order to write that Natural Cures book?

 

Bill O’Reilly of Fox News also raises his eyebrows a lot. However, he doesn’t keep them up for as long, so that habit is less noticeable.

Timing Tiles: a simple way for the Timer at Toastmasters club meetings to provide more useful feedback

At Toastmasters club meetings, along with timing each role, the Timer silently signals the speaker (or Table Topics Speaker, or Evaluator) when he has reached the minimum specified time, the middle of the time range, and the maximum specified time for that role. Typically this is done via a “traffic light” display with green, yellow, and red lights. For example, for the eight 5-to-7 minute speeches in the basic Competent Communication manual the green light gets turned on after five minutes, the yellow after six minutes, and the red after seven minutes. (Some clubs use simpler colored cards or flags).

But, why do we only provide feedback after five minutes? It seems to me that we have gotten stuck on the mechanics for speech contests, where the rulebook specifically calls only for a display at the minimum specified time, the middle, and the maximum. Most speeches in clubs aren’t contest speeches though. The timer has a stopwatch, so he could easily provide feedback at one minute intervals. Wouldn’t that reduce anxiety for our new speakers? Right now we expect them to remember to bring their own timer or stopwatch to the lectern. I recall some agonizing speeches where I either forgot to bring my timer, or forgot to start it. 

A simple way to do this would be to have square, colored timing tiles that could be placed in a holder to create a mechanical progress bar display. The prototype is shown above. It displays the situation after seven minutes. Parts cost less than $25. Tiles are nine 5-inch squares cut from 3/16-inch thick white foam board. Edges were outlined using a black marker. Colors were added to three tiles by using two-sided tape to attach poster board (or construction paper). The holder is a four-foot length of 1-by-3 oak lumber with two pieces of 5/8-inch quarter-round molding nailed to it to make a 1/4-inch wide slot. (I used scraps of 1/4-inch thick wood at the ends as spacers). The basic idea behind this display is the century-old Gantt chart used in project management.

The above image shows how the timing tiles would be updated to track a five-to-seven minute speech. White tiles mark the first four minutes, followed by the usual green, yellow, and red. A final, optional black tile could be added to indicate that the speaker is running way over time and should sit down. Timing tiles also can be used for Evaluation and Table Topics.

The above image shows how the timing tiles would be updated to track a 2-to-3 minute evaluation. In this case the white tiles appear at 0.5-minute (30-second )intervals. 

The above image shows how the timing tiles would be updated to track a 1-to-2 minute Table Topics speech. In this case the white tiles appear at 0.25-minute (15-second) intervals.  

What about longer speeches, like the 8-to-10 minute Inspire Your Audience speech that is the tenth project in the Competent Communication manual? For speeches with a minimum time of 8 minutes or more the white tiles would appear at 2-minute intervals, and for speeches with 12 minutes or more they would appear at 3-minute intervals. The above image shows how the timing tiles would be updated to track a 10-to-12 minutes speech from one of the Advanced manuals.   

What I have shown above is a simple, mechanical way to provide more feedback. As I previously described, this also could be done using a row of white and colored lights. Those who prefer using computers even could provide a continuous display of a speaker’s progress.

Will homeopathic silica reduce fear of public speaking?

About a year ago Madeline Innocent posted an article on Overcoming Public Speaking Fear with Homeopathic Treatment which stated that:

“Silica is one of our top medicines for overcoming public speaking fear, for a lack of confidence, for someone who is paralysed by anxiety or fear, is indecisive or for someone with a yielding or timid disposition.”

Silica (or as homeopaths sometimes grandly describe it, silicea terra, or sil for short) just is silicon dioxide (typically found in sand). How is it supposed to help? According to this web page about silicea 6X “cell salt” tablets:

“....The key to Silica’s deepest uses is a want of grit– physical and sometimes moral. It offers the most benefit to individuals with some or all of these symptoms: nervous irritability, timidity, fear of public speaking, exam nerves, fear of needles, weak ankles, pale skin, fatigue, a lack of vital heat, and weak hair and nails.”

If you drink tap water, then I would not expect that taking these lactose tablets would have any effect. Silica already is ubiquitous in tap water (and most fresh water). Your tap water probably went through a rapid sand filter. Typically silica is present at concentrations of a few parts per million (mg/liter), or 6X in homeopathic dilution jargon. Taking a pinch of it in tablets would be an insignificant addition to the daily intake via tap water.

For example, silica is present in Cleveland water at 1.6 mg/L, New York City water at 2.5 mg/L, and Los Angeles water at 16 mg/L. Silica content is not required to be listed in water quality reports, so many water systems don’t bother to report it. But like the Prego spaghetti sauce slogan says, “it’s in there.”

Resolve to use dramatic pauses

On January 3rd Doug Savage posted this hilarious Savage Chickens cartoon. One of my resolutions for this year is to use more dramatic pauses. It’s easy to forget the power of pauses in public speaking. When I get nervous, I instead fill all those spaces with ums, ers, likes, and you knows.

Dramatic pauses also are critical in comedy. Jack Benny, who played a miser, was famous for the following routine:

“THUG: This is a stickup. Now, come on. Your money or your life.

(long pause)

THUG: (repeating) Look, bud, I said ‘Your money or your life.’

JACK BENNY: I’m thinking it over!”

Monty Python’s Flying Circus has a sketch where an accountant hesitates about explaining what happened to that very last penny.

The joy of being linked to by a prominent newspaper web site

Today the first paragraph of Oliver Burkeman’s column in the Guardian (UK) linked to a post on this blog. His column was titled “This column will change your life: Written all over your face?” He was discussing whether people can really see what you are thinking. The link was to my second most popular blog post, "The 14 Worst Human Fears in the 1977 Book of Lists: where did this data really come from?" It's in the first paragraph - the blue word research.

That’s a big deal for me because the Guardian (once the Manchester Guardian) has the second largest online readership of any English language newspaper, following only the New York Times. Right now I’m relishing my 15 seconds of fame.

Progress bar displays for helping Toastmasters to time their club speeches

Every time I download a file with my Firefox web browser I can see a bar continuously indicating the progress of that operation from zero to 100 percent done. Why doesn’t the Timer for a Toastmasters speech give me similar feedback about where I am?

It seems to me that we have gotten stuck on the mechanics for speech contests, where the rulebook specifically calls only for display of a green signal at the minimum specified time, a yellow signal at the middle, and a red signal at the maximum. Most speeches in clubs aren’t contest speeches, so why don’t we provide more feedback?

In a previous post on timing lights for speakers I mentioned how a row of four white lights (as shown above) could precede the usual green-yellow-red traffic light display to indicate the elapsed time in minutes (or 20 percent intervals of the minimum specified time).

Even simpler mechanical displays are possible (as shown above). All that is needed is a holder with a slot in its top for for a row of eight square tiles. They could be 4-inch ceramic tiles, or just squares cut from 3/16-inch thick foam board. It would be easy to make a holder from a piece of 1-by-4 lumber by gluing on a couple pieces of 3/4-inch quarter-round molding spaced perhaps 1/4 inch apart. The final black tile indicates that the speaker is running way over time and should sit down. (Turning off all the lights would convey the same message).

Has anyone already been using these sorts of progress bar displays?