Edward Tufte Article

    In today’s world, there’s no question that PowerPoint has become the most obvious choice for presentations.  Anyone ranging from students, teachers and professionals all have used this program in effort to deliver a message to their audience.  According to Tuft, even such professions as NASA engineers use PowerPoint to share their ideas.  In his article, “PowerPoint Does Rocket Science–and Better Techniques for Technical Reports” Tufte goes into detail about the uses and misuses of powerpoint as well as possible ideas for better PowerPoint use. 
     One of his main points dealt with the hierarchical method of organizations.  In theory it sounds great: organize you thoughts and display them in the most effective way.  However, this is not always the case.  Illustrated by the slides, Tufte shows that the hierarchicalmethod took away from the effect and almost acted as a filler, or fluff, of information inwhich the NASA presenters were misinformed or uninformed completely.  Either way the organization reflected thier confusion.  In reality that many points of division are unnecessary and wastes the audience’s time. 
      Another point that Tufte made was the use of specific words.  Yes it is good to be specific is some areas and vague in others.  However, in this particular presentation the use of “significant” is a perfect example of what NOT to do.  The over use of the word is obviously something that should be avoided. But more importantly, words must be have a specificmeaning and not simply thrown around as if it has a universal meaning.  This word for example manged to have multiple meanings, ranging from alot to a little, even to a “vague” amount completely eliminating any “significant” meaning attached to the word.  Instead the use specific words that correlate to a specific meaning would be best.
    Overall, Tuft did make several good points.  While he does discourage some use of PowerPoint, he certainly does not disagree with it as a usable option.  As long as the presentation is  created and executed effectively, then PowerPoint an excellent way to go.  At no point in the article did he completely bash the use the PowerPoint.  Instead he simply showed both harmful and helpful methods of using PowerPoint.