the question is in word file attached andthe related program is in the description

CSC 540A, Spring 2012

HW4. Presenting Your Data using Voice-over-PowerPoint

Now that you've got a program that can generate some data (thank heaven that's over, eh?), it's time to use that program to generate a bunch of data, and then to communicate that data in a presentation. Your HW3 program should be able to generate “raw data”... in HW4, it's your job to turn that raw data into easily understood information. You are going to tell your data's story by making a PowerPoint presentation.

Your HW3 Pascal program merely had to output some data. Now you should run your HW3 program with many different initial values to get more data. The more quality data you generate, the better your HW4 presentation is likely to be. Spend some time being creative and industrious with your HW3 program to generate interesting combinations of data. After you have completed this kind of experimentation with your Pascal program, start working on presenting that data.

Here are some of the ground rules for your presentation:

11 PowerPoint slides:

1. A title slide, including your name, the name and number of this class, the date and a (hopefully clever) title about your data

2, 3.and 4. Three slides that tell the story of what your simulations were about. What were you generating, and what were you measuring?

5. A slide that discusses any interesting programming challenges that you ran into while coding and/or running your simulations. If it all was boring programming, then give some details about how long the longest execution took. Tell us SOMETHING about your programming experiences in this project.

6, 7. 8 and 9. Show graphs, charts, histogram, and/or tables that illustrate how your simulations and measurements turned out. Visually tell the story of your data. Be sure to label axes or columns in a table descriptively. You may decide to use a bar chart, a scatter plot, a histogram, a table, or a combination of these. But whatever you choose, it should give us a good idea of your results. If when you make these graphs, tables, and charts it looks like you don’t have enough data, feel free to generate more data in order to “fill in the gaps” in your data. If necessary, you can add an extra slide or two, but don’t get carried away. If you can’t think of 4 slides worth of interesting data, then go back to your HW3 program, change some of your initial values or assumptions, and generate some more data. You will have to include at least 50 points of data in your HW4 presentation.

10. A slide with a concise description of your conclusions about your data. What was the take home message of your data? What did it demonstrate to you about the experiment, the generator, or the real world of large numbers?

11. In your last slide, imagine what would be the next step in a research plan that builds upon what you discovered. How can you expand or refine what you've learned by further experiments?

Next, write a script for the narration of these slides. Do NOT write lots and lots of words on the slides, or a bunch of Pascal code. NO, no, no. Your voice (narration) should supply most of the words. The slides are just visual aids in putting across the big ideas that your voice will be explaining. Your slides give the broad strokes, and the narration fills in the details.

Make sure to use all those rules in Lecture D on PowerPoints, like how many lines on a slide (maximum) and how many words on a line (maximum) you are to put on PowerPoint slides. (The magic numbers are 6 and 6). Design your graphs and/or tables and pictures so that people can actually SEE the data. Be sure to label each axis and each column in any graph, histogram and table you use.

The most common mistake in HW4 is putting too much text information on each slide. Remember, your spoken words and your visuals should work TOGETHER, not repeat the same exact information.

I want your presentations to be between 12 and 15 minutes long. Shorter than that, you aren't giving us enough detail. Longer than that, you aren't being concise enough. Yes, I will time you.

Here are a few websites that talk about writing scripts. These aren’t about PowerPoint like Lecture B is, but all emphasize the importance of writing a script instead of "winging it."

http://www.edpath.com/RITfacultyScanlon.htm

http://www.cybercollege.com/tvp006.htm

I love this story from that last website:

“A student strode boldly up to Mr. Brinkley, introduced himself as an aspiring TV journalist, and asked: "Mr. Brinkley, what advice could you give me to be successful in broadcast journalism?" David Brinkley, who won more awards in news than any radio or TV newscaster in history, put down his fork, thought for a moment, and said, ‘Three things: Learn to write. Learn to write. And learn to write.’"

http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Script

Take the advice of the experts: write a detailed script. While you are practicing your presentation, you will probably notice things that are incorrect or just don't sound right. When you spot such a problem, take a note on your script, and then keep going.

This is a good time to consider the best way to present your data. Should you use a table, a scatter diagram, a histogram or bars?  Well, it depends. You might try all three and see which looks better, see which does a better job of communicating interesting things about the data you generated. Remember to "think like your audience." Your audience doesn't know nearly as much about your experiments as you do. Be sure you give the audience enough information so that they are ready to see your detailed "pictures of data."  Tell the story of your work carefully so that your audience learns something from your presentation.

Tables are good for allowing people to see the details of your data, especially if you don’t have too many pieces of data. Graphs are better at showing trends and large differences. Here is an example of a report that uses both tables and bar charts for the same data. See if you agree that tables and graphs of exactly the same data emphasize different aspects of the data:

http://mainegov-images.informe.org/dhhs/osa/pubs/correct/2004/csa04.pdf

Be very careful when using graphs that you don’t distort things on your axis. If an axis depicts the number of times you ran something, make sure each distance on that axis accurately reflects the number of time you ran it. So if you run something 100 times, then 1000, and then 1000000 times, then the first two points should be pretty close together, but the second and third points should be WAY far apart. You may decide to use log-linear or log-log graphs, but you must make that clear in your slides and your narration if you do. I should warn you that I am a stickler on this: label your graphs carefully, and make sure that the graphs don’t “lie” visually.

You may use MS PowerPoint or Open Office’s equivalent to do this presentation electronically. If you want to use something else, please let me know. No matter what software you use, you need to put narration to your slides in a way that I can hear it.

On the day HW4 is due, you will zip together your written script and your slides, and hand both in electronically. If the file (including the sound files) is too large for the Blackboard dropbox, then save it in your UIS edocs account, and give me ( [email protected] ) permission to download that file. If that doesn’t work, then burn me a CD or DVD, and snail mail it to me before the due date.

The name of the script file should be lastnameHW4script.doc (or .rtf or .odt) where “lastname” is your family name. The PowerPoint file should be named lastnameHW4.ppt, or lastnameHW4.pptx, where as usual “lastname” is your family name. If you need to send separate sound files, they should be .wav or .mp3. All of these should be zipped up into a single file that you will SOMEHOW get to me.

GRADING RUBRIC for HW4:

1) Was the file turned in on time?

2) Were the files named correctly and in a proper format?

3) Were the slides done according to the outline in the specification?

4) Were the slides done according to the lecture about PowerPoint slide design?

5) Were the data sufficient to tell an interesting story?

6) Were there many “um…” or “uh…” or repeated filler words in the voice-over?

7) Were the tables, graphs and charts used well?

8) Did the data seem to be correct and was there enough data to tell an interesting story?

9) Did the spoken words complement the slides well?

10) Is the presentation between 12 and 15 minutes long?