How a Mathematical Breakthrough from Pixar Can Help You Design Better Presentations

A few days ago, I started watching a Netflix documentary on how fractal mathematics helped start Pixar. (Yes, I watch really boring stuff on Netflix, but in my defense, I was watching it in bed, at night, trying to go to sleep. It worked.) We have always had a fantastic success teaching people how to design presentations that are based on just a few (three to five) main points. However, the documentary explained how the structure of this type of presentation works and why it works so well. So, in this episode, we’ll show how the techniques that we cover in our classes work… mathematically. We also have a Techfind that will help you add local humor to your presentations.TechFind: Use Google to Add Humor to Any PresentationWhen I first started speaking and writing, I was always looking for ways to add humor to my presentations. At the time, Dr. Phil was a regular on the Prah Winfrey show, and eventually, he got his own daytime TV show. Whenever he made an appearance on Oprah, he always got a lot of laughs because he added a lot of Texas idioms to his speech. (In fact, Dr. Phil was the first person to ever use the phrase “Open up a can of whoop-ass” on national television.) So, I figured that since I am also from Texas, if I added some uniquely Texas sayings into my presentations, my speeches might get even funnier. It worked.The great news, now, is that Google (or any other search engine) can makes finding the perfect idiom for your speech pretty easy. Just type your region into the search engine and add the word Idiom. When I typed up Texas Idiom, I got a bunch of funny saying such as…If you cut your own firewood, it’ll warm you twice.He can strut sitting down.She’d charge hell with a bucket of ice water.Busy as a stump-tailed bull in fly season.Okay, this technique doesn’t work for every state or region, but you’d be surprised by how funny regional humor can be. For instance, when I typed in “Alaskan Idioms”, I got…You know you’re in Alaska when your snowblower gets stuck on the roof.You know you’re in Alaska when you know that bear insurance is being with someone that you know you can outrun.You know you’re in Alaska when you have more miles on your snowblower than you do your car.Just for fun, let’s try Midwest Idioms.That makes as much sense as government cheese.Slow as molasses in January.He’s got a hollow tail. (Is angry.)The point is that these are a fun way to add just a spark of humor to your presentation.A Great Presentation has a Fractal StructureAs I mentioned in the introduction above, I came across the term Fractal Mathematics from a Netflix documentary. (Which documentary doesn’t really matter.) The more that the host explained about this division of math, though, the more sense the three-point talk makes. Without going into all of the boring explanations Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. An example of a natural fractal is a mountain range. When you look at a mountain from a distance, it is very difficult to judge how far away from the mountain you are. In fact, if you take a close up photograph of a bolder, it will be very difficult to judge whether the bolder is one foot tall or thousands of feet tall.Another example of a fractal is a triangle. Try this. Draw a triangle. Then put a dot in the exact middle of each side of the triangle. Now connect the three dots. You will create four new triangles that all look exactly like the first one, but on a smaller scale. You can do the process again and again, and you will always end up with smaller versions of the original shape.Pixar Realized that this Mathematical Theory had Other ApplicationsIn 1980, Loren Carpenter was working for Boeing in their computer graphics department. The executives at Boeing wanted their marketing posters to have realistic mountains in the background, so Carpenter wanted to try to make the mountain ranges using computer graphics. The problem was, tho