This week we continue to work on documenting the sources and characteristics of the data. We are going to explore a new dataset on COVID, which has a larger number of variables which will allow us to do more comparisons and explorations. We also consider another medium for communicating the results of or analysis: oral presentations and supporting documents.
Read Tufte “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within, Second Edition”1 You should have received one copy in the mail. If you do not have a copy by friday evening, please e-mail Chiara. To purchase additional copies you might go to Tufte’s web-page or amazon. You might also search the web for some spirited debate on this topic. Identify two quotes that strike you and be ready to share them.
Look at the the presentation The Italian COVID-19 epidemic and at the R Markdown file used to create it. Rename the .Rmd file and compile it on your computer. Note that you will need to have LaTeX2 [https://www.latex-project.org] installed; you will need to have a data file which you can download from the appropriate GitHub site3 https://github.com/pcm-dpc/COVID-19 (the file used in this presentation is in the directory called dati-regioni); and you will need either to comment out the images or procure yourself some equivalent (an easy task – they were all downloaded from the internet with rather trivial searches)
Look at the variables Tests and TestedSamples: what do they represent? why are they different? Look at the variables NewCases and ChangeCases: what do they represent? why are they different? (use the information available on the GitHub and insights you gain from looking at the data) Make a couple of slides illustrating what you discover.
Now consider Tufte’s suggestion: “it will be useful to replace PowerPoint slides with paper handouts showing words, numbers, data graphics, images together.” We have some limitations due to our on-line setting, but let’s try to work with this idea. Try to reshape this presentation by using two different files4 One of the advantages of a handout in addition to the slides is that it allows to break the strictly sequential order with which information is conveyed in a talk. For a different way of getting free from this straitjacket see Two-Projector Talks: a handout to distribute to participants and a set of slides projected (or on a shared screen). How would you redistribute the content? See how you can apply the principles you have gathered from the readings to improve the quality of your presentation leveraging these two formats.