INSTRUCTIONS FOR PREPARING YOUR FINAL PRESENTATION

The point here is for everyone to enlighten one another with what they
did -- dissemination of knowledge.  The secondary goal, side-effect
result is that it will potentially help Jeff and Eric grade.  However,
since 170 minutes / 17 presentations = 10, and there needs to be time
for a couple questions, you ONLY GET EIGHT (8) MINUTES!  This will be
a lot shorter than the final presentations if you were in the Fall
1998 machine learning course, which had less students.

Therefore, final project grading will depend mostly on the final
project writeup.  Make the writeup well-organized and clear, and you
should only need to spend a couple hours preparing your presentation.
Basically, make a few slides (even with magic marker if you don't want
to spend any more time with a computer), and plan to make a small
number of main points about what you did and what the results were.
If your writeup was well-organized, this will make your talk easy to
design.

YOU MAY NEED TO LOWER YOUR AMBITIONS WAY DOWN LOW REGARDING WHAT YOU
WILL HAVE TIME TO SAY.  BASICALLY YOU CAN ONLY SAY A FEW VERY
HIGH-LEVEL GENERAL THINGS QUALIFYING WHAT YOU DID.  I CANNOT
OVER-EMPHASIZE THE IMPORTANCE OF YOU COMING TO TERMS WITH THIS (SAD)
FACT.  IT IS NO FUN TO BE RUSHED (and no fun for me to rush you), SO
JUST PLAN ON A FEW BASIC, GENERAL THINGS TO SAY ABOUT WHAT YOU DID!

GENERAL PRESENTATION GUIDELINES:

Pick one person from your team to do the presentation, or plan ahead
carefully how you will divide the short presentation between speakers.

Slides do not have to be transparent, since we will have the CVN room
again.  Make separate slides for 0) the title and the team members, 1)
the problem, 2) your approach 3) results.  Optionally break these down
into "sub"-slides, and include a conclusions slide.  The content of
each slide should have either short noun phrases, or very very short
sentences -- do not expect the person to read -- it is distracting
from listening to what you say.  Rather, have the slide be an outline
of the points you are saying -- it does not have to be comprehensible
without your accompanying monologue.  If you have the slides online,
please copy them into the directory with your final project writeup
(in my AcIS directory -- see instructions on course homepage).

BASICALLY YOU JUST "FLASH" THESE SLIDES AND SAY A COUPLE SENTENCES.
You will not feel time pressure if you plan on only saying a small
number of things.  However, you will only have a few minutes to do
this, so you need to focus on the important aspects of what you've
done.  Practice it alone and for your friend/team a few times, timing
yourself!

DEMOS: If you have a demo, prep it while the person before you is
going, and make sure it is like 45 seconds, or probably don't bother.
Demos can be fun, especially if animation or dynamicism is going to
help convey the concept.  But, in general, demos tend to be more a way
to show implementation details that are not directly related to the
conceptual, significant content of what you have done.  Therefore, in
general, I discourage demos.  It is up to you.

If presenting makes you feel nervous, that is normal, and you are
welcome to speak with us about it.  Keep in mind that the purpose of
this is to share ideas in a fun way, and you are not expected to
"perform" well, but simply to convey some basic information to the
class.

FINAL WORDS OF WISDOM:

Emphasize the main points, and despite the fact that it is brief, show
main numerical results, if available.  When you show a table (e.g., of
numerical results), explain what each column and row is.  Floss daily
and push your pawns in the end-game.