Figures are an important part of scientific ‘show and tell’

 

 

 

 

  

There is a brief article by Julija Hmeljak and Kirsty Cooper in Disease Models & Mechanisms magazine on November 8, 2023 titled The importance of figures in scientific ‘show and tell’. Its topic mostly is articles for magazines, but it also will be useful for preparing speeches. Eight tips and tricks are discussed in Box 1 and can be paraphrased as follows:

 

Structure graphics logically. Keep in mind that each figure tells a story. Make information flow logically by using a left-to right and top-to -bottom arrangement. Avoid arranging in a circle - unless you are showing a cycle or presenting a mind map (spider diagram).

 

Help readers perceive the graphic structure by using a clear hierarchy in your text. Use larger and/or bold font for headings and sub-headings. Bold is preferable to underlining.

 

Your fonts should be large enough to be easily read and have good contrast with the background.

 

Avoid overcrowding your images, and remove unnecessary details.

 

Minimize text, and include recognizable landmarks.

Use colors mindfully. Use the same color to group objects or show relationships, and use different shapes to distinguish individual elements.

Beware of red-green and blue-yellow color combinations which can confuse the color blind.

Be consistent within and between figures.

An image was cropped from OpenClipArt.

 

 

Living your life sideways - The joy of orthogonality

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

The Wikipedia page for Orthogonality says that:

 

“In mathematics, orthogonality is the generalization of the geometric notion of perpendicularity. Although many authors use the two terms perpendicular and orthogonal interchangeably, the term perpendicular is more specifically used for lines and planes that intersect to form a right angle, whereas orthogonal is used in generalizations, such as orthogonal vectors or orthogonal curves.”

 

There is an interesting 2026 book by Ian Bogost titled The Small Stuff: How to lead a more gratifying life. A Google Books preview from it goes through page 27. The book has the following sections and chapters:

 

Preface: What If Contentment Were Easy?

 

The Sensory Enchantment of Everyday Life

C01 The Small Stuff 7

C02 Happiness, Satisfaction, Gratification 20

C03 The Problem with Marshmallows 28

 

How You Got Dematerialized

C04 The Decline of Sensory Life 43

C05 Why You Can’t Open Doors 50

C06 You Can’t Control What You Do Not Own 58

C07 Working Anywhere Means Working Nowhere 66

C08 Every Place Is the Same Now 75

C09 Adrift in the Data Sea 83

C10 Automated Away 92

 

The Path Back to Gratification

C11 Reclaiming Sensory Life 105

C12 Heap Wonder on Everything 115

C13 Get a Haircut Every Day 126

C14 Talk About Anything 137

C15 Keep Some Junk Around 147

C16 Live Your Life Sideways 155

C17 Spend Your Day in Its Moments 164

 

Conclusion: Build a Relationship with Everything 177

 

In Chapter 16, Live Your Life Sideways, Ian says on page 157:

 

“A concept from mathematics, which my colleagues in engineering, computer science, and even game design have borrowed, can help explain that feeling and offer lessons for applying it to gratification in your downtime. The idea is called orthogonality, and its just a fancy name for a perpendicular – such as a line intersecting another at a ninety-degree angle. Applied to more concrete domains than geometry, one thing is orthogonal to something else when it contains distinct elements that complement but do not interfere with those of the other.

 

Consider the difference between chess and checkers. Both games are played on the same grid. In checkers, every piece moves in an identical way, forward in a diagonal. Even when you ‘king’ a checker by reaching the other side of the board, it still moves in the same way, just backward, too. But in chess, the pieces move in varied ways. Pawns and rooks can both move forward, but rooks can move forward as much as they want, until reaching an obstacle. Bishops can move diagonally. And knights move in that distinctive, L-shaped way -they can also jump over pieces.

 

The relationships between the different chess pieces are orthogonal. Rooks and pawns move along one axis, bishops along another one, the queen and king across both, and the knights according to a different logic entirely. The combination of all these creates the strategic depth that characterizes chess. Whether it is a better game than checkers is not the point; rather, orthogonality makes chess feel bigger, richer, and more complex.

 

Orthogonality can help explain all sorts of phenomena, even some that are not deliberately designed to be orthogonal. Fashion works well when it is orthogonal. If you want to look good but vary your dress for different styles, seasons, and situations, then you want a supply of separates and accessories that you can combine in creative ways. You can dress down a pair of jeans with a T-shirt and sneakers or dress it up with a shirt or blouse and a jacket or sweater, along with a pair of pumps, boots, or loafers. Capsule wardrobes, which first became popular in the 1970s, have been revived as a way to mix and match more easily, economically, and ecologically. Capsule outfits are composed of core pieces, often in neutral tones, that can be worn alongside colorful or style-specific accents.

 

Food, too, benefits from orthogonality. Sweet things are beneficially offset by saltiness; fatty ones by the freshness of citrus. A gooey or wobbly dish such as flan is improved by a complementary crunchy element, such as a shard of toffee. Delightful though a schnitzel or a steak might be, their brownness benefits from accompaniment by creamy white mashed potatoes and a forest of green asparagus. Contrast is good. A thing is better alongside its complement. Your life is better when it includes a version of itself done sideways.”

 

Page 161

“….Othogonality – the art of living your life sideways – is not meant to create hard rules or unbreakable guidelines. As you search for gratifying complements in your life, focus less on the output of the practices you undertake than on the moment-to-moment experience of doing them. That’s where orthogonality lives, in the sensory encounters, not in the work or leisure itself.” 

 

 

 

Africa’s true size is shown in a new world map adopted by the United Nations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A map has limitations. For instance, there is the Mercator projection shown above that has Africa being similar in size to Greenland, but the continent really has an area 14 times larger than the Danish territory. A Wikipedia page says:

 

“The Mercator projection (/mərˈkeɪtər/) is a conformal cylindrical map projection first presented by Flemish geographer and mapmaker Gerardus Mercator in 1569. In the 18th century, it became the standard map projection for navigation due to its property of representing rhumb lines as straight lines. When applied to world maps, the Mercator projection inflates the size of lands the farther they are from the equator. Therefore, landmasses such as Greenland and Antarctica appear far larger than they actually are relative to landmasses near the equator.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article by Mariamne Everett at ALJAZEERA on September 4, 2026 titled UN votes to adopt a new world map that reflects Africa’s true size, as is shown above:

 

“The resolution, put forward by African Union (AU) member states and the Bahamas, was backed by a vote of 164-1 with six abstentions.

 

… The United States – the only country to vote against the resolution – said it promoted an ‘ideological agenda’ and was a distraction from the ‘genuine problems of international peace, prosperity or good relations.’ ”

 

The U.S. whining equally well could apply to renaming Lake Ontario. I blogged about it on August 28, 2026 in a post titled Why did Donald Trump rename Lake Ontario, whose area is the smallest of the five Great Lakes, to Lake America?

 

World map images of a Mercator projection and equal area were adapted from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

The U. S. national debt now is forty trillion dollars. What does that really mean?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As shown above, we can express forty billion by different factors of a thousand, as multiples of a trillion, billion, million, or thousand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article by John Towfighi at CNN Business on August 23, 2026 titled The national debt just hit $40 trillion. But just how big is $40 trillion. He answers that question by asking What is my share? Divide that number by the population of the U.S. The Joint Economic Committee at the United States Congress has a Debt Dashboard with lots of statistics. As shown above, one of them is that the total gross national debt amounts to $116,480 per person.

 

And if we look at a web page from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis for Real Median Personal Income in the United States, we find that the latest number from 2024 was $45,140. So, the national debt per person is about 2.6 times the median income. Thus we are not able to quickly pay it off.

 

Back on August 17, 2011 I blogged about How to make a large number incomprehensible – or comprehensible. And on And on July 12, 2016 I blogged about How to make statistics understandable. More recently on December 23, 2024 I blogged about How should we present a huge number like the two billion dollars earned by the Taylor Swift Eras tour?

 

The cartoon bag of money came from OpenClipArt.

 

 

A succinct primer on delivering more effective medical presentations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a succinct 5-page article by Adin Nelson et al. in the Journal of Hospital Medicine for April 15, 2026 pages 946 to 950 (Volume 21, Number 8) titled Developing, designing, and delivering more effective research and didactic presentations: A primer and recommendations. Their advice applies to presentations in general, not just medical ones.

 

The article has sections titled:

 

Introduction

Learning Objectives

Explicit Organization

Slide Design

Accessibility

Public Speaking Skills

Next Steps

 

The second paragraph in their section on Learning Objectives begins by stating that:

 

“Objectives should be outcome‐focused and learner‐centered. Outcome‐focused means describing what will happen after and because of (not during) the presentation. Learner‐centered means describing what will happen to or for learners, rather than describing what the speaker will do.”

 

The third paragraph begins:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Bloom's Taxonomy [Ref. 5] and the SMART framework are two useful tools that can help ensure objectives are learner‐centered, actionable, and achievable. Bloom's Taxonomy is a set of suggested keywords to use in learning objectives. The words are all action verbs (e.g., ‘list’, ‘plan’, or ‘contrast’), so using one of them ensures that the learning objective is outcome‐focused. Additionally, Bloom's Taxonomy divides the verbs into six categories, [as shown above] which are ranked in order of increasing cognitive challenge from Remembering (e.g., Recall, List, etc.) to Creating (e.g., Design, Construct, etc.). SMART is an acronym for five characteristics of effective learning objectives. They should be Specific (not overly‐broad or vague), Measurable (possible to objectively determine whether or not a learner meets them), Achievable (able to be accomplished by the targeted learners), Relevant (appropriate to the learners' needs), and Time‐bound (planned to be accomplished within a predetermined period, not open‐ended).”  

 

The second paragraph in their section on Slide Design states that:

 

“The Assertion‐Evidence framework is a more effective alternative to slide design. It consists of four core tenets: (1) Each slide should contain one key point, and multiple points should be divided across multiple slides. (2) Each slide's key point is expressed in a single declarative sentence - the assertion - in place of the slide title. (3) The remainder of the slide is devoted to visual evidence (ideally a picture or diagram) demonstrating or reinforcing the key point (see Figure 1). (4) Supporting details, background explanations, and additional context go in the oral presentation, not on the slide.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I blogged about it back on February 19, 2014 in a detailed post titled Assertion-Evidence PowerPoint slides are a visual alternative to bullet point lists. An example is shown above from a post on August 20, 2023 titled Reading a fracture surface like a road map – fractography in failure analysis.

 

Their final section on Next Steps says:

 

“Learning to be a more effective presenter can seem intimidating, but as with any new skill, practice makes progress. In this article, we explain core concepts and key first steps for planning goals and objectives, designing slides, and optimizing your public speaking for clear and effective presentations. If adopting all of these recommendations at once feels overwhelming, pick one - maybe using assertion sentences in place of slide titles - and incorporate that into your next presentation. Then solicit feedback and continue to iterate. Making one small change at a time, every hospitalist can improve their teaching skills and become a master educator.”

 

 

A blog post from Seth Godin about having or doing a good job

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A simple graphic like a 2x2 table can explain something more clearly than lots of words. There is a post by Seth Godin on July 21, 2026 at Seth’s Blog titled The Having/Doing job gap. His six-paragraph post is neither concise nor clear. I have described things more clearly, as shown above, via a 2x2 table with four quadrants. On January 19, 2024 I blogged about The joy of 2x2 tables, or charts, or matrixes.

 

At the upper left is when you don’t have a good job but still do a good job, which is better than expected and thus is a gap. At the lower right is another gap when you have a good job but don’t do a good job, and need to improve.

 

At the lower left is when you neither have nor do a good job, which is the worst situation. Finally, at the upper right, is when you both have a good job and do a good job, which is the very best situation and a success.

 

Seth’s long, full post is as follows:

 

“It’s a dance between workers, bosses, and the market.

 

The most stable quadrant happens when a thoughtful and consistent boss hires the right person, pays them fairly, creates positive working conditions and useful training. In return, the company gets extraordinary performance. That’s someone doing a good job who also has a good job.

 

A particularly unstable quadrant is the worker who gets all of the above, but because of culture, choice, or lack of enrollment doesn’t do a good job. That mismatch could last for a while, but it’s shaky.

 

Consider for a moment the boss who takes advantage of people (and the system) by creating lousy conditions and paying too little but still manages to enforce output that they consider acceptable. Once workers realize that they don’t have a good job, they leave, if the culture and economy permit it. Government is critical in helping people doing a good job get unstuck once they realize they don’t have a good job.

 

And the last quadrant is all too common: you don’t have a good job and you don’t do a good job. It’s not clear which came first, but they often go together.

 

Everyone deserves to have a good job. And smart bosses show up to help make that possible.”

 

 

Effective Scientific Presentations Across Formats - A Modern Guide for Science Trainees, Researchers, and Others

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a very detailed 17-page pdf article by Steven C. Grambow and Kevin P. Weinfurt at Advances in Social Science Research on September 19, 2024 (Volume 11, number 9, pages 42 to 55) titled Effective Scientific Presentations Across Formats: A Modern Guide for Science Trainees and Researchers.

 

The abstract says:

 

“This paper presents a comprehensive tutorial on delivering effective scientific presentations in the modern era, addressing a landscape altered by the COVID-19 pandemic. The shift to virtual and hybrid formats has fundamentally changed the norms of how scientific findings are shared, creating new challenges and opportunities for presenters.

 

Drawing from over a decade of experience teaching and refining presentation skills, we address a soft-skill gap in clinical and translational science training. The tutorial outlines four key topics: (1) identifying your scientific story, (2) using effective slide design, (3) presenting data, and (4) delivering your presentation. These lessons, developed through extensive seminars and individual coaching at various academic institutions, enable researchers to enhance communication and audience engagement across presentation formats.

 

Our approach, informed by cognitive processing and data visualization principles, has adapted to the new reality of virtual and hybrid presentations. This work contributes practical insights for optimizing presentation skills in this changed communication landscape. By offering actionable recommendations derived from real-world experience, this tutorial provides valuable guidance for science trainees, junior faculty, and established researchers across disciplines. It aims to equip readers with the necessary tools to deliver compelling scientific presentations in any format, advancing effective academic discourse in an era where virtual and hybrid presentations have become the norm.”

 

This article is useful for most presenters, not just scientists. There are four particularly useful figures that are shown by individual images:

 

Figure 1. Comparison of a Slide with More (top) versus Fewer (bottom) Words

 

Figure 2. Directing the Audience’s Attention Through Outlined Shapes or Highlighted Boxes

 

Figure 3. Elements of an Effective Presentation Palette

 

Figure 4. Presenting a Complex Figure in Steps to Support Your Storytelling

 

Back on January 7, 2019 I blogged about A good (but not great) article on how to give a scientific talk. And on February 19, 2014 I blogged about how Assertion-Evidence PowerPoint slides are a visual alternative to bullet point lists.

 

The 2013 image of Edward C. Stone came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

A xkcd cartoon about holes we have drilled in the earth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An xkcd cartoon by Randall Munroe on July 1, 2026 (shown above) is simply titled Holes. Its vertical scale extends from 4,000 meters above sea level to 12,000 meters below it. Details shown on it are discussed at Explain Xkcd.

 

The Bingham Canyon open-pit copper mine near Salt Lake City is shown at the upper left. I blogged about it on July 15, 2011 in a post titled What can we say about a really big hole in the ground?

 

At the lower right Randall shows the two deepest holes, at almost 12,000 meters (or 12 km). How far have we gone relative to the center of the earth? The radius of the earth averages 6,371 km. So we have drilled 0.19% of the way to the center – barely scratching the surface.

 

 

A thoughtful book by Marcus Buckingham on how to design love into business

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a thoughtful 2026 book by Marcus Buckingham titled Design Love In: How to unleash the most powerful force in business. Google Books has a preview through page 38. Marcus discusses it in a ChangeThis manifesto on April 8, 2026 titled The Business Case for Love. DLI is his acronym for Design Love In.

 

On page 11 he says:

 

“For leaders to create reliable, repeatable changes in behavior, they must focus on the experience that creates the forces that create the behavior. This means leaders must understand their real job. Leadership is not fundamentally about clarifying expectations or motivating teams or cascading strategies. Leadership is the craft of shaping the experiences that shape human behavior. Leaders – the most effective ones – are experience-makers.

 

This insight reframes leadership entirely. Every moment between a leader and a colleague or a leader and a customer is an experience. The first day on the job is an experience. The weekly check-in is an experience. Sending an email is an experience. Presenting work is an experience. Being recognized, being challenged, being supported – or conversely, being dismissed or ignored – are all experience. What we measure on employee and customer surveys are felt experiences. What we label ‘culture’ is really just the aggregated experiences of the employees. When we say we want to build a strong culture, what we actually mean is that we want to design every touchpoint so carefully that each person has a similar experience. (And culture building is so hard precisely because there are so many touchpoints that have to be designed).

 

Always remember that because leaders create experiences in every moment, they are always shaping the internal forces that shape behavior. The question is not whether you, as a leader, are an experience-maker. You are. The question is whether you’re a skilled one.

 

So to help you build this skill, in part one of the book you’ll learn that love isn’t purely mysterious – that instead, love, when deconstructed, reveals itself to comprise five distinct feelings. These five feelings are sequential. You start with number one and end with number five. The leader with the DLI skill knows how to use this sequence as their blueprint for designing love in to [sic] anything - from onboarding to a team meeting to a customer interaction with a brand.

 

….In part two of the book, you’ll take these insights, this data and these perspectives, and put them into practice. Specifically, you’ll learn the playbook for how to design love in to [sic] the experiences of those you lead and of those you serve.”

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A table of mine, shown above, summarizes the five feelings of love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marcus has a series of nine graphics starting on page 17  (which I have summarized above in another table) which compare the Current mindSET with the corresponding DLI mindMOVE.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But, as shown above, his curious choice of graphics put the Current mindSET at the upper left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For Cartesian coordinates we would expect that to be at the lower left (Quadrant III) and the DLI mindMOVE at the upper right (Quadrant I), as is shown in my revision.

 

The falling in love cartoon came from OpenClipArt.

 

 

A pie cartogram is less useful than a pie chart

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am not a fan of pie charts. But there is an even less useful one called a pie cartogram, as shown above. For a pie chart each wedge has a cut beginning at the center of the circle and extending to the rim. The cartogram removes that requirement so comparisons cannot be easily made via angles. All we have is areas.

 

Pie cartograms are described by eric at Stories & Stats on August 18, 2023 in an article titled Pie cartograms. An article at TYWKIWDBI on August 10, 2024 titled How do you slice a pie… chart? has another example.

 

 

I think that a bar chart, as shown above, is better for comparisons than a pie chart.

An xkcd cartoon shows a hilariously overloaded flag design

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Randall Munroe’s xkcd comic for May 25, 2026 (which I colorized to yellow) has an awful flag design. Apparently all dozen ideas from the flag design committee were included. The worst is the bottom fringes that remind me of a for sale notice thumbtacked to an office bulletin board. The flag is analyzed at Explain xkcd. 

 

On May 14, 2016 I blogged about how Looking at flag design will change how you make PowerPoint slides. And on September 23, 2017 I posted about an example - A new, simpler, better flag for the city of Pocatello, Idaho. On June 30, 2020 I blogged about how Mississippi is going to change its state flag.

 

 

Images generated by artificial intelligence tools may be inaccurate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a post by Dan Russell on his SearchReSearch blog for April 22, 2026 titled SearchResearch (4/23/26): AI image gen tools are great, as long as you don’t ask for accuracy. One of his examples is an electric kettle. Two images are shown, one from ChatGPT and another from Gemini. Both are missing the important bimetallic thermostat that cuts off the current when the water boils.

 

An 11-minute explanatory YouTube video by Quasar-Ed from November 4, 2024 is titled The Engineering behind Electric Kettles.

 

An image of a boiling kettle came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

A botched bar chart about conspiracy beliefs from a discussion of the 2025 Chapman Survey of American Fears

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On May 20, 2026 I blogged about A botched pie chart about homelessness from a discussion of the 2025 Chapman Survey of American Fears. It was in an article titled Chapman Survey of American Fears 2025 Key Findings.

 

That article has another section titled Conspiracy Theories with a horizontal bar chart created by Gabriella Bartsch, shown above, which I have annotated (in green) based on the data presented in the Methods Report for Q22 on pages 72 to 74. All seven percentages she listed for the sum Agree + Strongly Agree are wrong. They are too low by an average of 3.6%, which is much more than the web blank percentage (Don’t Know) that is 0.6% or less.

 

This graphic should have been edited by a professor to check the math before it was put into an article.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I previously discussed this chart in a post on October 24, 2025 titled An article about key findings from the 11th Chapman Survey of American Fears for 2025 has stumbling student graphics with significant errors, with another bar chart of mine, as shown above.

 

 

A botched pie chart about homelessness from a discussion of the 2025 Chapman Survey of American Fears

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On October 23, 2025 I blogged about how In the eleventh Chapman Survey of American Fears for 2025, public speaking only was ranked #46 of 67 fears at 33.7%. That survey had some additional questions with four possible agreement levels of Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, or Strongly Disagree. Six of them, Q20 in their Methods Report, asked about homeless people. For example, Q20A was:

 

“Please indicate your level of agreement with the following statements – Homeless people should be allowed to live on the streets or in tents.”

 

There was an article titled Chapman Survey of American Fears 2025 Key Findings, which has a section on Homelessness that included a miscaptioned pie chart (by Emma Boyd) titled OPINIONS OF HOMLESSNESS POLICY which I have shown above with added annotations.

 

The chart caption claims to show the percent who Strongly Agree or Agree, but really does not. I added the correct percent in green. The sum for all six questions is 372.3%, and the percents she shows were rescaled to add to a hundred - divided by a factor of 3.72. The largest percent, which she placed at the lower left, really is 92.4%, but she instead shows 24.8%.  

 

Also, for pie charts the usual layout is to start with the largest wedge beginning at 12 o’clock and then go clockwise in decreasing order. More careful editing could have caught these problems.

 

 

Clip art of meshed or locked gears

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On November 17, 2020 I blogged about Smoothly meshing gears or jammed gears. Meshed gears describe graphically how individuals or parts of an organization can work together smoothly (as is shown above via an image modified from OpenClipArt).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jammed gears describe the opposite. At OpenClipArt there is a set of three gears locked together, shown above.

 

There is a long article by Bartoz Ciechanowski on February 12, 2020 titled Gears with discussions, animations, multiple gears, and three jammed ones at the very end.