Here’s a short clip from a TED lecture by Oxford mathematician Professor Peter Donnelly, who does important work in genetics.
Rhetorically speaking, it’s a nice example of how effective a simple sequence of PUZZLE-SOLUTION-PUZZLE-SOLUTION can be (on which, of course, you can learn more in my books).
A great source of videos for anyone interested in speaking and presentation
While preparing for a visit to the University of Michigan, I was directed by one of my hosts to a fantastic source of free videos of lectures by a range of distinguished experts who speak about quite complicated subjects, mostly in a very accessible way.
If you don’t know it already, I’d strongly recommend a visit to TED – where you might like to start by watching Professor Peter Donnelly, an Oxford mathematician, who makes probability theory sound far more fascinating than anyone who ever tried to teach me maths or statistics.
The website introduces TED as follows:
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.
The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).
This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free. More than 200 talks from our archive are now available, with more added each week. These videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted.
A Tory leader's three evasive answers to the same question
Another gem from my video archive confirms that not answering an interviewer's questions isn't a monopoly of Labour leaders like Clement Attlee, as was vividly demonstrated 35 years ago, when a young David Frost asked the same question three times in an attempt to find out whether or not the then Tory leader, Edward Heath, liked the then Labour leader, Harold Wilson:
If you've arrived here belatedly (via Iain Dale's Daley Dozen on 5 Jan 2010), you might also be interested in my latest post on 'A Snakes & Ladders Theory of Political Communication' - which doesn't really go along with Iain's optimism about the effectiveness of interviews with politicians.
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