Your presentation needs to be in your own words. If you take a quote from somewhere, then you need to give reference where it is due. Your presentation will be 5-7 minutes in length total - practice the length carefully! Speaker Guidelines A quote: Oral presentations my be summed up as follows: "Tell them what you're going to tell them. Tell them. Then tell them what you told them". In the Introduction you tell them what you are going to tell them. In the Body and Technicalities you tell them. In the Conclusion you tell them what you told them. Don't be scared of this repetition. Sometimes repetition is the only way to clarify misconceptions. Naturally, this means that you should repeat things in different ways, and not quote yourself verbatim. Practice, practice, practice! Practice in front of others. Practice in front of a mirror. Time your talk to be sure it fits into the time frame allotted. Use visual aids if they help make the talk clearer. Be sure to go very slowly since others will not have seen the material before. Do not flip through slides or transparencies quickly - instead, leave them up for a while to give the audience a chance to read them and let the material sink in.

Your presentation should include the following:
Introduction Your introduction must explain what your final project is about, why it is important, why you chose it and what you learned from it, and summarize the contents of the rest of the presentation [some of this may be part of the conclusion instead].
Body of the Talk Most of you won't have time to address everything that is in your paper, so you will have to pick and choose what to focus on. Be sure to include some significant mathematics or statistics in your presenation.
Conclusion This might also contain questions / ideas for further exploration, or briefly summarize what else you did in your paper.

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Answering Questions What do you do if someone asks you a question you do not know the answer to?

Take your time. Don't allow yourself to be rushed. If you need to stop and think about a question, stop and think.

Don't feel obligated to answer. The last thing you want is to have your name associated with inaccurate information. If you don't have an opinion on a topic, don't try to invent one. Some possible ways to respond, in this case:

That is a very interesting question... I thought about that, but it was beyond the scope of my project
What do you think about that? Does anybody have any ideas?
I will definitely consider that during future explorations.
Can you reiterate and expand on your question
Sorry, but we are all out of time now. Don't confuse a request for information as a request for a complete answer. Try to give some relevant information. Sometimes you might have thought about a related issue - if so, say so and relate your answer to what you do know.

Dr. Sarah will try to help when she can too!