Presentation Tips

Advice about presentations and practice

Matthew DeHaven

April 15, 2026

Course Home Page

Presentation Tips

Other Useful Resources

Tips for Presentations

  • Practice
    • Practice = speaking out loud
  • Limit text used on slides
    • Walls of text are hard to read, shorter lines are more emphatic
  • Introduce your figures
    • Explain the x-axis, the y-axis, each line, then the takeaway
  • Use colors for emphasis, not decoration
    • One piece of colorful text draws attention

Tips for Research Seminars

  • Practice, practice, practice
    • You should know what you will say on every slide
    • Be able to start on any slide
  • Goal: 2 slides of introduction
    • First slide: positioning / hook, research question, answer
    • Second slide: key mechanism / key results
  • Present slowly
    • Rule of thumb: 1 slide per 2 minutes
    • If you are going faster, people are not comprehending your material
  • Lecture slides \(\neq\) seminar slides

Slide Style and Design

Same Content in a 16:9 Frame

Sample Slide Content16:9 frame

This is a simple test slide to demonstrate how the same content is framed.

  • An example bullet point that is kind of long
  • Another bullet point that is also kind of long
  • A third bullet point that is even longer than the other two bullet points to show how text wraps in this format

Some more text that is actually like a paragraph of text that is meant to show how paragraphs look in this presentation format. Here is another sentence in the same paragraph to show how text wraps in this format. And it could keep on going.

Same Content in a 3:2 Frame

Sample Slide Content3:2 frame

This is a simple test slide to demonstrate how the same content is framed.

  • An example bullet point that is kind of long
  • Another bullet point that is also kind of long
  • A third bullet point that is even longer than the other two bullet points to show how text wraps in this format

Some more text that is actually like a paragraph of text that is meant to show how paragraphs look in this presentation format. Here is another sentence in the same paragraph to show how text wraps in this format. And it could keep on going.

Same Content in a 4:3 Frame

Sample Slide Content4:3 frame

This is a simple test slide to demonstrate how the same content is framed.

  • An example bullet point that is kind of long
  • Another bullet point that is also kind of long
  • A third bullet point that is even longer than the other two bullet points to show how text wraps in this format

Some more text that is actually like a paragraph of text that is meant to show how paragraphs look in this presentation format. Here is another sentence in the same paragraph to show how text wraps in this format. And it could keep on going.

Color Palettes

Multiple R packages exist for color palettes.

  • “rainbow” palette used to be the Matlab default
library(prismatic)
plot(color(rainbow(10)))

Color Blindness

A problematic palette for colorblindness and grayscale:

check_color_views(rainbow(10))

Color Blindness

My usual colors, also not great:

check_color_views(c("steelblue", "orange", "lightpink3", "mediumpurple"))

Color Blindness

A colorblindness friendly palette:

library(viridisLite)
check_color_views(viridisLite::plasma(10))

Projecting Tips

Projecting

Projecting is a skill — requires practice.

  • Projecting \(\neq\) yelling

Projecting =

  • Speaking with your diaphragm, not your throat
  • Enunciating clearly
  • Speaking at a moderate pace
  • Creating resonance in your chest

Practice: record yourself presenting, place microphone across the room

Projecting Exercises

Feeling your diaphragm move:

  1. Place hands on stomach and lower back, speak normally

  2. Take deep breaths

  3. Say “Ha” while exhaling from stomach

Feeling “resonance” in your voice:

  1. Place hand on chest, start humming

  2. Increase your pitch, feel the vibration in your head

  3. Lower your pitch, feel the vibration in your chest

Practice Presentation

  • Three example slides
  • Pulled from one of my research projects

Introduction

A New Measure of Financial Conditions

Matthew DeHaven, Brown University

Construction of the VFCI

The Volatility Financial Conditions Index (VFCI) is a measure of the market price of risk.

  • The market price of risk is a theoretical concept that captures the compensation investors require for bearing risk.

We estimate the VFCI, using:

  1. financial market data,
  2. the volatility of consumption.

The VFCI Spikes during Financial Stress