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Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)

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Re: Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)

#101

Post by karaterobot »

rhacker wrote: post #95

The title is wrong - it didn't kill 7 people. And it is stated in the article that it "helped" kill 7 people, but even that is a leap. For all we know the slide actually reduced the percentage chance of this happening by .0001%. We can't actually know. We might as well blame it on the guy that was in charge of the foam order but had an extra extra long poop in the morning that reduced his work hours that day and he o…

Are you just saying that the powerpoint slide didn't literally kill the people, the explosion did?

Re: Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)

#102

Post by ziml77 »

logifail wrote: post #96
andi999 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. Also where is the executive summary for that slide on that slide?

> Also where is the executive summary for that slide on that slide? Q: Shouldn't every PowerPoint slide be an executive summary? PowerPoint can be a terrible way to [attempt to] present detail.

I believe they were using that question to point out the absurdity of making a slide that long by suggesting that it is made even longer with a summary of itself.

Re: Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)

#103

Post by techsupporter »

silvestrov wrote: post #87
giantg2 wrote: post #13

Another NASA screw-up that they're trying to pin on the vendor engineers, just like Challenger. The title is not reassuring. Conservatism in engineering is essentially about creating safety margins through conservative estimation. The title is saying we need to be careful because a tile was likely penetrated. Hell, if I remember correctly they were reporting that there was known tile damage on the news before reentry…

When engineers are not allowed to use "alarmist language" the organization often changes to use such unreadable texts. I don't expect "foam strike more than 600 times bigger than test data" would go over well politically. You'd be telling the audience that these people will die while everybody watches. No manager want to be the messenger for that kind of messages.

> When engineers are not allowed to use "alarmist language"

This has been a recurring theme throughout my career, the struggle between being seen as "alarmist" and accurately conveying urgency.

We get this in the medical field all of the time. "Outcomes delivered via mechanism seen as potentially contraindicated" or some other spaghetti. I've been in these meetings many times, where we (the individual contributors) have to tell the bosses or peers or partner group about something that might be bad. As in Y2K-style of bad, where it will be bad if we don't address it but if we do address it with the urgency needed, no one will be able to recognize the success for what it is.

As you said, no one's manager wants to be seen as crying wolf all of the time, but post-hoc there's the expectation that a couple of engineers way out at the end of the limb of the tree didn't just wait for the limb to be sawed off behind them, they took out the saw and did it themselves. That they stood up in the presentation and yelled "you're all idiots! This is going to kill the entire crew! Everyone will die, don't you see?! And I'm not standing for it!" just before they rip the badge off of their lanyard or belt hook and then righteously storm out.

Re: Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)

#104

Post by sosborn »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #33
codeflo wrote: post #29

Linked from Tufte’s article, I found this interesting comment from someone’s experience at Microsoft: [1] > Attempting to have slides serve both as projected visuals and as stand-alone handouts makes for bad visuals and bad documentation. Yet, this is a typical, acceptable approach. PowerPoint (or Keynote) is a tool for displaying visual information, information that helps you tell your story, make your case, or prov…

"a nice PDF with screen-shaped pages" Right, but you can create such a thing with a word processor. Just change the page size or orientation. Sure, the page breaks might not default to where you want them, but you can add page breaks wherever you want, and don't need to create a text box for each paragraph.

More importantly (to me anyway), copying large swaths of text is so much more reliable in a word doc. Copying text in a pdf (derived from PowerPoint no less) is a special hell.

Re: Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)

#105

Post by mypalmike »

lostcolony wrote: post #62
TobTobXX wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article (emphasis mine): > This, however, is the story of a PowerPoint slide that actually _helped_ kill seven people.

Yep; this slide was worse than useless in that to the given audience it could instead read as an endorsement that launching is fine.

Please read the article so you don't come across as ill informed. This was not a launch/no launch decision.

Re: Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)

#106

Post by phicoh »

bumby wrote: post #70
zelos wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but I don't think anyone can deny that it is an appalling slide. I count 3 spelling and grammatical errors alone. It looks like the bad "before" example in a presentation skills workshop. This was created by engineers working on life and death issues involving billions of dollars of hardware.

I agree with you, but to be charitable, this was a real-time and evolving situation where I'm willing to bet the slide was expected to be finished "yesterday"

This seems to be the kind of slide made by someone without a lot of experience presenting work.

The other issue is, some people really, really, don't want to speculate.

In this case it seems that the person who made the slide probably assumed that the tile could be broken with a high enough probility. But because it was outside all available data, the slide says that we don't really know.

Of course, anybody in a position to make such a go-no-go decision should have enough experience talking to engineers, and seeing this effect in action to recognize the slide for what it is. It is really weird to conclude that based on absence of data, it is probably safe.

Re: Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)

#107

Post by brimble »

techsupporter wrote: post #103
silvestrov wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When engineers are not allowed to use "alarmist language" the organization often changes to use such unreadable texts. I don't expect "foam strike more than 600 times bigger than test data" would go over well politically. You'd be telling the audience that these people will die while everybody watches. No manager want to be the messenger for that kind of messages.

> When engineers are not allowed to use "alarmist language" This has been a recurring theme throughout my career, the struggle between being seen as "alarmist" and accurately conveying urgency. We get this in the medical field all of the time. "Outcomes delivered via mechanism seen as potentially contraindicated" or some other spaghetti. I've been in these meetings many times, where we (the individual contributors) h…

Maybe it's survivorship bias and I'm only seeing in-fact-rare good examples, but organizational communication seemed so much better back in the 1940s-~1960s.

And other communication, for that matter. Instructional videos from that era make "pro" YouTube look like amateur hour, let alone modern material produced by industry and government, which is even worse.

Re: Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)

#108

Post by mdekkers »

giantg2 wrote: post #13

Another NASA screw-up that they're trying to pin on the vendor engineers, just like Challenger. The title is not reassuring. Conservatism in engineering is essentially about creating safety margins through conservative estimation. The title is saying we need to be careful because a tile was likely penetrated. Hell, if I remember correctly they were reporting that there was known tile damage on the news before reentry…

> How the F do you work at NASA and not understand the basic principles of mass, velocity, and energy well enough for that to stand out enough

Have you ever worked for a business with “management”?

Re: Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)

#109

Post by SiempreViernes »

krisoft wrote: post #72
giantg2 wrote: post #13

Another NASA screw-up that they're trying to pin on the vendor engineers, just like Challenger. The title is not reassuring. Conservatism in engineering is essentially about creating safety margins through conservative estimation. The title is saying we need to be careful because a tile was likely penetrated. Hell, if I remember correctly they were reporting that there was known tile damage on the news before reentry…

> The title is saying we need to be careful because a tile was likely penetrated. It is a godawfull title. I believe that is how it reads to you but it totally reads the opposite to me. I read the title and it translates in my head as “we reviewed the test results and they suggest that the tiles are built sturdy enough to not get penetrated”. Exactly because what you say the word “conservatism” means to me that a sys…

I read the title as saying "be careful when predicting tile penetration" based on one of the first point they make being that the method used to predict penetration "overpredicted penetration of tile coating significantly".

Though in fairness they then have sub points that kind of contradict this conclusion rather than support it.

But honestly this slide would make more sense if several of the sub points where top level independent statements instead.

Re: Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019)

#110

Post by giantg2 »

lostcolony wrote: post #48
giantg2 wrote: post #13

Another NASA screw-up that they're trying to pin on the vendor engineers, just like Challenger. The title is not reassuring. Conservatism in engineering is essentially about creating safety margins through conservative estimation. The title is saying we need to be careful because a tile was likely penetrated. Hell, if I remember correctly they were reporting that there was known tile damage on the news before reentry…

Tufte is not an employee of NASA. He is an employee of Yale, and a thought leader in information design. HE was the one saying the slide design is poor, and doing so not in the interest of assigning blame, but in the interest of highlighting ways to communicate better. To say that "the slide doesn't have any issues" is laughable on the face of it. But it's immaterial; your claim is that "NASA just ignored the enginee…

I understand that he's not a NASA employee. Do you think it's fair to claim that the slide killed 7 people? I don't. Could it be worded better or have a better layout - sure. But there's no problem with that slide that would support the claim that 7 people died because of it. The information was there.

As you said, it is a 2 way street. Slides are accessories. Do you have the conversation that unfolded during this slide and presentation? Did the audience ask questions about things they didn't understand?

Is there even any evidence that NASA didn't know about the damage or had a rescue plan?

You claim they wouldn't have taken the risk, yet if I remember correctly they had no rescue plan and gave a relatively low (70%ish maybe) survival rate. Low level employees did raise concerns about severity of the damage. This seems to support the idea rather the communication between the vendor and NASA was sufficient since some NASA employees shared the same view.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2271525/It-better-d...

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