Choice of fact selection will bias your communication
Kelly Clarkson
Last week we talked a little about the impossibility of reporting “Just the Facts.” I wasn’t actively looking for examples this week, but one just jumped up and slapped me in the face.
I followed a Twitter link to Mashable’s story entitled Kelly Clarkson’s Album Sales Down After Ron Paul Twitter Endorsement, intrigued by the headline. I knew they had reported last week that Clarkson’s sales were up following her endorsement of libertarian Ron Paul as a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, although even then they focused on the “flap” rather than either the endorsement or the rise in sales. (The “flap” was about some followers who reacted badly to her endorsement. Other stories elsewhere reported a surge of over 400% in a single day, and quoted a number of tweets to her explicitly saying they had bought the album because of her endorsement. None of this was mentioned in either Mashable story.)
Just the facts? The way you say it matters
“Just the facts” is a phrase not only a part of American culture, but part of a values system–as if the facts can be separated from the expression of facts. Here’s the reality: there is no such thing as facts apart from the expression of those facts, and the expression of facts inevitably changes the perception. The mere selection of facts, of which facts to focus on, changes perception.
For instance, Scott Shane notes a very important dichotomy in the way people talk about tax increases on businesses (as if a tax increase on business doesn’t just get passed on to the rest of us anyway–but that’s a different point). In his article Less than a Tenth or More than Four Fifths? he says, “The share of small businesses and the fraction of small business income hit by tax increases are usually very different numbers.” Both are simply facts, and yet the choice of which to focus on in a talk or a paper yield very different impressions.
Don’t let the tools run you
photo credit: Sean MacEntee
Do you find yourself getting sucked into either the defaults of PowerPoint (bullet point after bullet point), or unable to resist throwing all the shiny effects into your presentations?
Garr Reynolds is the leading voice in effective presentation design these days–the overall design of the whole presentation, not just the presentation software part, but he is probably best known for his teaching on the effective use of presentation software.
In his article Progress and the intentional selection of less Garr points out that “while technology has evolved in dramatic ways over the last generation, our deep human need for visceral connections, and personal engagement has not changed.” He is certainly not building up to an anti-technology screed, but rather making the case for choosing technology wisely.
Not really the biggest fear?
Richard Garber makes the point well that the often-quoted idea is wrong: fear of public speaking is probably not as widespread as we’ve been told. Communication anxiety is still very widespread, as the research cited shows. It’s just not as universal as we’ve heard (and as I’ve often said in class). You can see this between the lines and explicitly in his article, “What’s the difference between a fear and a phobia?“
Advice for business owners helps speakers
In How to Conquer Your Sales Fears, Entrepreneur magazine offers tips intended for business owners that also provide solid help for speakers who fear aspects of the Speech to Persuade. It offers techniques for overcoming five common fears in such situations. While not every technique can be used by a speaker, most can, and the principle behind the technique can almost certainly be applied in some fashion.
Cross-posted at http://blogs.pstcc.edu/dking/2011/11/16/advice-for-business-owners-helps-speakers/
Why current education models don’t work: it’s in our genes
Peter Gray at Psychology Today has posted a thoughtful blog article entitled Why Children Protest Going to School: More Evolutionary Mismatch. I find it an insightful argument in favor of homeschooling and several other education methods that do not lead to a factory model of schooling.
Intelligence, even multiple intelligence, not real important in learning
Effort is. MindShift asks the question, Can Everyone Be Smart at Everything? and seems to conclude that we don’t need to be. My only quibble with the article is that the headline doesn’t seem to me to fit the article very well. But I like the article itself. We’ve known for awhile that telling a kid, “You’re so smart!” isn’t very effective. “Great effort!” works better. Even “Good job!” doesn’t work–kids tend to interpret as “you’re smart” or “you’re talented.” They don’t see that as something they have any control over, whereas they do have control over their effort.
“[T]elling kids they’re smart when they get good grades encourages them to continue focusing on the grade rather than the learning process,” they say.
More importantly in light of recent practices, though, is this: the emphasis on learning styles can be just as counterproductive. When you tell a kid that he is a visual learner, it can leave the message that no one expects him to learn, say, via auditory means–again, he has no control over it. “Taking that idea one step further, kids might think that if they have to work hard at something, that must mean they’re not smart.”
Furthermore,
“Clearly, people have distinctive abilities and aptitudes. Some people have higher visual ability, and some have higher auditory ability,” said UCSD professor Hal Pashler, lead author on the report. “But the question is whether that predicts anything about the most effective way to teach them. … There is a complete lack of evidence of the sort.”
There’s a lot more food for thought there. Go take a look at the article to see the implications that seem, to me, to point beyond educating kids (as important as that is) to educating college students.
What’s a degree worth?
The following infographic comes from Rasmussen College. What do you think about its insights?
Source: http://www.rasmussen.edu/student-life/blogs/main/is-a-bachelors-degree-really-worth-the-cost/
Publishing student work via Flipboard
As I write this, I’m at the Innovative Professor Conference at Austin Peay State University, getting ready to do a presentation about a method of publishing student work for Flipboard, one of the most popular apps available on the iPad.
I have this theory that “out loud” is best for big picture information–establishing context, talking about meaning, etc.–while detail is best communicated via writing. In keeping with this, in the session I’m mostly trying to show what’s possible and point to resources, while developing the details on the “how to” via a public Google doc. I’m also pointing to this post for people to be able to find these resources:
- My Twitter feed: @donnellking
- The Google doc how-to
- The Prezi from the session
Talk about specialized….
My wife, who is in Florida dealing with her mother’s estate, asked me to research how to glue styrofoam without melting it. It took only seconds to come up with the answer, but in the process I stumbled across a site that specializes in telling you how to glue specific materials to other specific materials. How handy! It’s not exactly about communication, but on the other hand it tells me something about how the Internet has made a difference in our lives–it’s a unique way to communicate very specific information that likely would not have been done effectively under old media. Even the site name is memorable for its application: ThisToThat.com.