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ATI's Data Presentation and Visualization course

Summary:

    Presenting and visualizing data has become a mainstay in everyday life. Whether reading the newspaper or presenting viewgraphs to the board of directors, all technical workers, especially engineers and scientists, need to know how to give successful presentations and interpret and apply basic visualization techniques to their activities.

    This course will significantly improve the way you access, explore, and present information. Three-day students will receive two textbooks: 1. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte and 2. Loud and Clear: How to Prepare and Deliver Effective Business and Technical Presentations.

Instructors:

    Mary Ann Kmetyk is a Principal in Applied Performance Strategies, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in customized technical and employee development training. Ms. Kmetyk provides consulting and training services in the areas of leadership development, performance management, communications skills, and effective human resource practices. Ms. Kmetyk has over 20 years of training and human resources experience in designing and managing systems supporting strategic organizational goals. Her experience includes targeted employee recruitment, leadership training, team facilitation, human resources management, government regulatory compliance, and project management. Ms. Kmetyk holds an M.S. in Applied Behavioral Science from Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. in Economics and Political Science granted by Chatham College.

    Dr. Brand Fortner, an astrophysicist by training, is chief scientist of the Intelligence Exploitation Group at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Dr. Fortner was previously founder and chairman of Fortner Software LLC, developer of Noesys, a tool for managing and visualizing technical data. He is co-founder of Spyglass Inc, and led the team that designed the HDF-EOS data format used by the NASA EOS project. He was Manager of Applications Software for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. He is the author of The Data Handbook: A Guide to Understanding the Organization and Visualization of Technical Data and Number by Colors: A Guide to Using Color to Understand Technical Data.

    Ted Meyer is currently the Information Architect for Project Albert, a Marine Corps program that leverages high performance computing and modeling to provide support to decision-makers. Previously, he was the CTO and product designer for Fortner Software LLC, where he managed the development of the company's data organization and visualization tools. From 1990 to 1996, Mr. Meyer worked as the Information Architect for NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System Project. Before NASA, he was a Cartographer, Geodesist and Physical Scientist at the Defense Mapping Agency. He co-authored Number by Colors: A Guide to Using Color to Understand Technical Data.

What you will learn:

  • Identify the four types of presentations and their applications.
  • Plan out the presentation using the six step planning process.
  • Select appropriate audio-visuals.
  • Manage speaker anxiety and stress. Handle the question and answer session.
  • What kind of data visualization do you need?
  • How do you overcome data access roadblocks?
  • How should my data be structured and presented?
  • What color should I use in my presentations?
  • What tools are available to access and visualize my data?

What Past Attendees Say:

  • "Great class to get the creative juices flowing."
  • "Fascinating subject,extremely useful."
  • "Excellent videos and visual aids!"

Course Outline:

    Part One: Effective Presentations (Day 1)

    1. Types of Presentations.

    2. The Six Key Steps to Effective Presentations. Establishing Objectives. Conducting an Audience Analysis. Who is the Audience? Audience Characteristics.

    3. Preparing a Preliminary Plan. Main and supporting ideas.

    4. Selecting Resource Materials. Charts, Graphs, Pictures and other Visuals.

    5. Organizing Materials. The Introduction. The Body. The Close. Retaining the Audience’s Attention. Practicing and Evaluating.

    6. Managing Presentations. What Makes A Good Presenter? Managing Yourself. How You Look. Dress. Posture. How You Act. Eye Contact. Body Expressions. How You Sound. Language. Voice. Dealing with Nervousness, Anxiety, and the Audience.

    7. Handling the Question and Answer Session. Dealing with Difficult Participants.

    Part Two: Data Visualization (Days 2 & 3)

    1. Overview and Visualization Basics. What is Visualization? Examination, Exploration, and Presentation; Good Visualization, Goals of Visualization, Exploration Methods, Tufte: Graphical Excellence, Perceptual issues.

    2. Types of Data and Data Organization. Annotations and metadata, data organization and abstraction, data models, grids, binary versus text, data compression and tiling, data formats.

    3. Standard Visualization Techniques I. Column data, time series, line plots, parametric plots, scatter plots, histograms, box plots, pie charts, parallel coordinates, scales, axis.

    4. Standard Visualization Techniques II. 2D Matrix data, contours, surface plots, vector plots, pseudo-color images, data fill, interpolation.

    5. Uses and Mis-Uses of Color in Visualization. Color Models, 24bit color, color tables, CIE Color, RGB, CMYK, grayscale, pseudo-color, False Color, palette manipulation, fiddling, alpha channel, hyperspectral and multispectral.

    6. Standard Visualization Techniques III. 3D Data, volumes, polygonal data, iso-surfaces, slice/dice, volume rendering, translucency, 3D vector and tensor fields, nD data, animation.

    7. Human-Computer Interactions. HCI design process, perception and cognition, automation, information architecture, HCI technology, navigation.

    8. Data Visualization Exploration Tools. Commercial, open source, interfaces, toolkits, applications, environments, platforms.

Tuition:

    Tuition for this three-day course is $1390 per person at one of our scheduled public courses. Onsite pricing is available. Please call us at 410-956-8805 or send an email to ati@ATIcourses.com. Tuition may be pro-rated, $590 for Part One: Effective Presentations (Day 1); $890 for Part Two: Data Visualization (Days 2 & 3).