A Demonstration Fail Tale

In a recent blog post titled Public Speaking-(Using Props)-A Mississippi Mess Jonathan Sprinkles described a mealtime demonstration he tried that didn’t work. He started by showing that an egg sank to the bottom of a clear glass vase filled with water.

Then he added table salt, which was supposed to dissolve and make the egg float. (His point was that how things work can be different when you make just one change to your environment). But, even after he poured in a whole salt shaker worth the egg still sank.   

Jonathan said that:

“One of the people at the head table happened to be a science teacher. He discreetly leaned over to me when I sat back down and said, ‘Hey, it happened to me my first time, too. Next time, use warm water.’ ”

He warned:

“Don’t ever try something for the first time on stage, especially when you are getting paid. I got big-headed and forgot the importance of testing before I go live. No matter how well you think you know a part of your talk, practice it in the car, in your hotel room, over the phone, wherever. Don’t risk your rebooking on what you think you know.”

What else might be wrong? Maybe just not enough salt. A web page about Floating Eggs in Salt Water suggests using six tablespoons of salt per cup of water.  What else could go wrong? Use a hard boiled egg, not a raw one. You might crack a raw egg if you stir the water with a table knife to make the salt dissolve. 

More complicated demonstrations have even more possible glitches. A common one is in products with rechargeable batteries, which can drain via self-discharge. (That’s why I have a spare battery pack for my electric drill). Check first, and bring along a charger and a spare.  

The egg image came from Wikimedia Commons.

Why don’t we celebrate the new year in downtown Boise by dropping a potato the size of a Subaru?

Dylan Cline came up with that great idea. He created the grandly named Idaho New Year’s Commission and Grotato. Dylan and his supporters raised money, took $10,000 over to Weiser and had Sharolyn and Chris Schofield build a 16-foot long foam-covered replica of an Idaho spud.

You can watch the KTVB video or look at photos from the Idaho Statesman and Idaho Press Tribune.

Boise State Public Radio described the spud as being Subaru-sized. The Schofields previously built the truck-mounted Big Idaho Potato that I blogged about in May 2012.

Toastmasters International got a Christmas present from the New York Times

It was an amusing 2200-word article by Henry Alford titled Ahem, Ummm, Well...(Joining Toastmasters to Overcome a Fear of Public Speaking).

Their intrepid investigative humorist discussed his mostly positive experiences at the New York Toastmasters club located in the city with that name. Mr. Alford commented that:

 “....Most of the group seemed shy and skittish, but a few of the men had the willed steeliness of the motivational speaker or serial killer.”

Surprisingly some of his descriptions of Toastmasters aren’t quite correct. For example he says the person who counts Ahs and Ums at a Toastmasters meeting is called the Grammarian when, of course, it’s the Ah Counter. (Some clubs combine those two roles to Ah Grammarian, which is perfect for obsessives or fussbudgets). He also says that members give prepared speeches that are four to seven minutes long. Eight of the ten speeches in the basic Competent Communication manual are five to seven minutes long. The first Icebreaker speech is four to six minutes, and the last Inspire Your Audience speech is eight to ten minutes. There also are longer speeches in some of the advanced manuals as shown here. 

After you have read his article you might consider joining Toastmasters, as I did. I found that being in a supportive club environment eventually reduced my fear of speaking to an acceptable level.

You should do more research first though. Henry said he did a Google Search to find a club, which is silly and something you definitely should not do. Instead, go to the Toastmasters International home page, look at the upper left corner, and click on the red FIND a location near you box. In the U.S. you can search by ZIP code and pick the preferred meeting day and time. There are 173 clubs within 10 miles of ZIP code 10016.  84 are open to all, but most others have member eligibility criteria (are corporate clubs). A few others like Bronx Advanced Speakers are specifically for experienced Toastmasters.

Times Toastmasters is the corporate club at the New York Times. That’s why I was surprised some of Henry’s descriptions weren’t correct. Whoever edited the article didn’t even bother to ask their inside subject matter experts, those club officers.

If there are several Toastmasters clubs in your area, you should visit more than one  before you join. Clubs differ, and one might be a much better fit for you than the others. Think about what day and meeting time would fit best into your life. If you’re a morning person, you might prefer a club that meets at 6:00 AM. Or, you might prefer noontime meetings. If you’re a night owl, you might prefer dinner time or evening meetings. Some clubs meet weekly, while others only meet on alternate weeks.

In February 2011 James Feudo posted A Primer for Attending Your First Toastmasters Meeting as a Guest. I suggest you read it. Mary E. Mann didn’t, and freaked out, as I described back in August.  

Carol M. Highsmith’s image of Santa Claus came from the Library of Congress.                

Happy New Year! Celebrating 300,000 page views

Earlier this month I was surprised to find that this blog had over 300,000 page views. To me that’s a large number, about the audience for a couple of big NASCAR races or three college football stadiums.

The most popular post this month (and my second most popular overall) is Two types of speech outlines; speaking and preparation, which appeared back on July 5, 2009.

The fireworks image actually is from back on July 4, 2008.

‘tis the season for pies and artistic charts about them

 

Several years ago the makers of Mrs.Smith’s pies (Schwan's Consumer Brands North America) did a survey that asked people what their three favorite types of pies were.

by herrimanjoe.
Explore more infographics like this one on the web's largest information design community - Visually.

At Visual.ly they showed those results as an artistic pie chart (see above) with ten categories and a silly caution that the total adds up to more than 100%. The total actually was 271% (rather than an even 300%), which left me wondering if there also should have been an Other category for a remaining 29%.

At a total of  271% the chart was ridiculously inflated.

That total is a serious violation of the usual assumption that a pie chart will be used for percentages which add up to 100%. Therefore I have redone it as a horizontal bar chart. 

by Column Five Media.
Explore more infographics like this one on the web's largest information design community - Visually.

Before Thanksgiving I saw a post on the Make a Powerful Point blog that led with a widely posted infographic titled There’s Always Room for Pie, featuring another artistic  pie chart of nine favorite pies, and reportedly based on an NPR survey.

Residents of Georgia and Florida probably would question the absence of Peach and Key Lime pies. They might expect to find them in a category labeled Other, but none is shown. 

When I looked up the NPR survey I got a shock as illustrated above in a bar chart that compares their results (yellow) with those in that artistic chart (red). First, they didn’t list Strawberry pie. Strawberry-Rhubarb pie came second, at 15.6%. Second, they didn’t list Pecan at 8% - just Other at 7.1%. Third, the categories shown did not add up to equal the total number of clicks. What was missing (and presumably Don’t Know) is 15.6%, or equal to the very second item, Strawberry-Rhubarb.   

That NPR survey included chess pie. The classic cookbook The Joy of Cooking notes that:

“Chess pies, now chiefly a southern specialty, are essentially pecan pies without the nuts. There are countless varieties, but all are rich and intensely sweet, approximating candy.”

Bill Neal’s 1990 book, Biscuits, Spoonbread and Sweet Potato Pie, further adds that:

“The classic chess pie is pointed up with vanilla and/or nutmeg. Lemon chess pie, perhaps the favorite, receives just enough citrus flavor to name, but not dominate, the custard. Chocolate chess is the rich choice.”

The Mrs. Smith’s survey results also can be plotted with fruit and custard (or egg) pies as separate categories.

Fortunately there is a simple remedy for re-educating people who misuse pie charts.

Santa Claus is still around: Free download of SlideStar slide design book

A press release today from BoldPoint announced that  through January 1st they are giving away their SlideStar slide design ebook.

They hope you’ll like it enough to buy their other two books, Point of You and StoryPilot.

You also might want to download a paper on PowerPoint Presentation Flaws and Failures: A Psychological Analysis which I discussed in September 2012 in three blog posts:

Rules Commonly Broken
Survey of Common Flaws and Annoyances
Do People Know and Understand What They’re Doing?

The toy department image was adapted from a century-old Puck magazine.

Communicating without a sound

Last year during his Hurricane Sandy press conferences the mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, used Lydia Callis as his sign language interpreter. Watch this YouTube video to see how her exuberant gestures effectively communicated his message to the deaf community. Later she blogged about her experience in The silver lining of a hurricane, which also is on a video.






During the memorial service for Nelson Mandela this month there was a completely ineffective sign language interpreter standing next to the speaker behind the lectern. Thamsanqa Jantjie made far fewer gestures than the woman interpreter back in the SABC studio did, as shown in the full video coverage (for example, at about 0:31:51).