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PowerPoint Counterpoint (March 2, 2005)
I am a rather harsh critic of PowerPoint,
and include this brief disclaimer
in all of my training classes. One of the web resources I cite in my criticisms of
PowerPoint is
written by Peter Norvig, a research scientist at Google. Dr. Norvig took the text of
Lincoln's Gettyburg address fed it into the PowerPoint Autocontent Wizard, made a few tweaks,
and published it on the web. It is one of the best examples of how bad PowerPoint is for
presenting complex ideas.
I got an email today from John F. Raffensperger who felt that Dr. Norvig's web page sent
the wrong message. His argument is that we are blaming the tool rather than the craftsman. To
demonstrate this, he reworked Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and published it at
It is an interesting presentation which makes use of public domain pictures and music.
Interestingly enough, the presentation lacks any slide transitions, background, clip art,
animation, or any other PowerPoint effects. To me, it says that a minimalist approach to
PowerPoint (don't use anything that comes with the program) may be the best way to use
PowerPoint if you have to use it. This web site is definitely worth viewing, especially if
you want to understand the complexities of the controversy about PowerPoint. You should also
look at Dr. Raffensperger's
suggestions to graduate students about presentations.
Some additional defenses of PowerPoint:
2008-07-08.
page. Category: Presenting
research data
