Encouraging Quality in Presentations

Competitions for Well Presented Posters

Background

Following our involvement in the 1998 Compstat conference in Bristol, the ASC committee offered to fund a prize to encourage participants presenting material through posters to give more attention to the design and presentation aspects of their work. Prizes were awarded at Compstat in 2000, 2002 and 2004, at the ASC Conference at Warwick in September 2003, and will be offered at other appropriate conferences, including our own.

In the past the standard of presentation at statistical conferences (including Compstat ) has often been rather poor, consisting of little more that a (rather long) paper pinned on a display board. Some presenters think about design, but these have been a minority. This is in contrast with some other disciplines, where considerable care is paid to the production of most of the posters, often the only form of presentation available to the majority of authors.

A poster represents an opportunity that is different from either a printed contribution to a proceedings volume or a verbal presentation. There are two major differences:

1. The display space is 2-dimensional, so it gives an opportunity to present material in a non-linear way.
2. The audience usually browses posters, rather than selecting specific ones in advance (as they do with verbal presentation in parallel sessions), so catching attention from a distance is important.

Criteria

Posters are judged on the quality of their design and their effectiveness at communicating their message. Four specific factors are assessed:

1. The overall design of the poster and its impact from a distance
2. The clarity of the overall structure of the message being conveyed by the poster
3. The choice of material (type and quantity) for the content of the poster
4. The use of the 2-dimensional space to enhance the message

The quality of the substantive content of the poster is not considered as a factor.

The Prize

The prize for a competition is usually £100 / €150. Judging is done by a small group representing ASC and the conference organisers. The judges independently assess all the posters and then meet together to identify a winner and any other posters deserving of particular mention.

The Winners

Compstat 2004, Prague Oleg Nenadic, Walter Zucchini, Daniel Adler, Guenther Kratz Institute for Statistics and Econometrics, University of Goettingen Computational issues in creating an online atlas This poster has a good initial impact, and is above average in all other respects. Click here for a full report, including larger images and other commended posters.
ASC 2003, Warwick Zoë Dowling, Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, UK The Opportunities and Challenges Presented by Web Survey Design This poster has good overall design and level of detail, though it is a little weak on immediate impact. Click here for a full report, including larger images and other posters.
Compstat 2002, Berlin Isabel Serrano, Juan Jose Hoyo & Dolores Gonzàlez, University of Huelva, Spain Non linear state space models and Gibbs sampling applied to fisheries stock assessment This poster has an eye-catching design and strong structure, but rather too much material. Click here for a full report, including larger images and other commended posters.
Compstat 2000, Utrecht Christof Nachtigall, Olivia Wüthrich-Martone and Rolf Steyer, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany Causal unbiasedness outside randomised experiments: testing unconfoundedness The poster had a good overall design and clear structure. The only criticism was that it contained a little too much material. Click here for a full report, including larger images and other commended posters.