Presentations Data Considerations

Tables and especially charts are useful alternatives to long text passages on slides. A well-designed chart can get a point across in little enough time that it hardly interferes with simultaneous spoken text. Better still, a truly visual graph is not processed sequentially, so it does not compete for the same intellectual resources as text; its complexity is often in its depth, not its breadth.

Example: Presenting IDEA Data

The following before (Figure 1) and after (Figure 2) example shows how an all-too-commonly-seen presentation slide — with an overabundance of content and no stand-alone contextual value — can be converted using the principles shared here and in other sections of this toolkit.

Figure 1. Original PowerPoint slide containing child outcomes data table.	Figure 2. Revised slide using the above mentioned principles, hints, and tips for slide-crafting and data visualization.

See the Charts page for examples of common data visualization formats used in early childhood presentations.