About your presentations:

You are being asked to give a presentation that is 15 minutes long. What this means is that you should plan on 12 minutes of speaking (or so) and 3 minutes left for questions from the audience. How many slides should you plan on? The answer depends on how dense your slides are (how many plots and how much text you have per slide). You will have to explain all of your plots and graphs very clearly, so allow time for that. A good rule of thumb is 1 minute per slide, but some slides will go more quickly or slowly.

Practice saying your talk out loud to get the words set that you want to use for each plot, to figure out how to introduce each slide or new topic, to help in the slide transitions, and to understand how much time you will take so that you don't go over your time allocation. Conferences are *strict* on timing so please time your talk correctly!

Below please have a look at the sample talks, and the comments I have made to go with them. Remember that less is often more: you want your audience to come away remembering key points, not all the gory details. Get to the heart of the matter and the big picture. Convey excitement of the subject, too. Please read the "how to give a good talk" I linked to the projects webpage. Slides you may want to have, or topics you may want to cover in your slides, include but aren't limited to:

-Introduction to the Physics: Always motivate the measurement, concept, or point of the topic you are covering.
-History of the subject or previous measurements. Current status of our knowledge of the subject.
-Or motivate historically, then tell a story about how the measurement or discovery unfolded.
-Discuss the location, detector, facility, or other relevant details about the measurement(s) you are talking about.
-Talk about the measurement technique.
-Expected sensitivity (precision) of the measurement, or obtained sensitivity in the case of a discovery (compared to previous). -Always good to compare to other experiments after the same piece of physics, either ones before or to come in the future.
-Talk about how the measurement affected or will affect our knowledge of particle physics: what is the big picture, and the consequences of the discovery or future measurement.
-Always give a summary and conclusion. You don't have to call it that, but make sure you cover the points.
-Look to the future and discuss future prospects of the experiment(s) you are talking about, or other experiments as stated above, if that is what is relevant.

• Example (pdf or ppt) of Cactus talk, will be given at PANIC '05 this week in Santa Fe by Prof. Chertok.
  Comments: Outline optional, but sometimes good idea to help audience. Nice intro to experiment and detectors, as well as measurement techniques. Not enough introduction to what the measurement is they are trying to do and why it is important and exciting. Assumes audience knows this, until slides 18-19 when the point of the experiment is finally introduced. (Usually better to motivate the science first.) Nice, LARGE, plots and pictures. Good discussion of sensitivity of Cactus to what they are trying to measure (ie- how well can they do). Good discussion of what possible errors they can make, or calibration issues. Proper summary and plans at the end.
• Example (pdf) of CDF talk on Exotics searches, given at SUSY '05 conference in Durham by postdoc Muge Karagoz Unel.
  Comments: Great start with motivation and strategy, tells what we are looking for and why its exciting or interesting, as well as what the challenges are. Good to discuss what the current state of affairs is, what measurements are underway already in the field (slide 3). Helps to outline talk along the way, like on slide 4 where she says the first thing she will discuss is the search for new resonances. Necessary intro to the detector(s) used for the measurement, and what components are useful. Plots nice and large, but a little too busy (too much text). Conclusions and future presented, which is good. Backup slides: use these to think about further questions the audience might ask (have the answer in the backup slides), or include topics you don't have time to cover, but people might be interested in.
• Example (ppt) of Tevatron talk on top quark mass measurements given by Koji Sato at European HEP conference in Portugal this summer.
  Comments: Nice kick-off intro slide about why the measurement is interesting, and what the current status (value) is for it. Important introduction to machine and location of experiment (Tevatron at Fermilab) and the upgrades that have improved the ability to make this measurement (slide 3). Good (but very brief) introduction to the two detectors used in the measurement. Nice discussion on how top quarks are produced and what the signature of the physics process is, also how the events are selected from the data (cuts specific for top quark event selection). Excellent comparison of methodology for measurements (slide 7). Includes future projections for sensitivity (improvements) where possible (slide 11). Good to have summary of all measurements if possible and are comparing different results from different experiments and different techniques (slide 19). Future improvements slide is crucial for this! Summary and what to expect next year is very good. Slides are busy, can be simplified, however. Again, backup slides give more information in case audience asks.
• Example (pdf) of talk on Tevatron searches for the Higgs by Prof. Conway at LHC meeting in Prague, July 2003 (outdated info now, but good talk).
  Comments: Note his simple, clear style for the slides. One problem with this one is he doesn't motivate the Higgs and why its interesting. You should always do this to begin with unless you know the audience are already experts on the subject! In this case, the talk was given to experts so he does not motivate why Higgs is exciting. He does, however, introduce the Tevatron and the CDF and D0 detectors, along with nice plots of electroweak measurements that each experiment has made to show that the detectors are well-calibrated and functioning, and ready for physics. He then talks about the performance of the Tevatron machine, and how much luminosity we were getting at the time (slide 6). Important to discuss all aspects of the experiments, location that affect the prospects for the measurement, and the sensitivity you can achieve. Slides 8-12 discuss top mass because that measurement can constrain the mass we expect the Standard Model Higgs to appear at. He gives an introduction to how Higgs is produced and decays at the Tevatron to show what we look for in searching through the data (how we select possible Higgs events). Current state of affairs given on slide 15, good, and sensitivity projections for the Tevatron on slides 17-28 (which was the point of the talk: how well we can do based on the 2003 study-- not the latest study). Slide 29/30 motivates searches for supersymmetric Higgs models, followed by projections for SUSY Higgs signatures. Good summary: convey excitement for the future prospects.