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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)

#81

Post by NikolaNovak »

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…

100%. One of the things I'm drilling into my team (we do a lot of slides!), is you have to decide - are you making slides for:

1. presentation - should be sparse, key, anchoring data that enables people to ground themselves while they listen and pay attention to YOU

or

2. Reference - dashboard and background and details and density

If a deck may be used for both purposes, intentionally or not (e.g. we expect it to be shared and referred to by people not attending), resist the urge to do a hybrid slide, and if at all possible make presentation slides at front, reference/supplementary slides at back.

Worst situation is when somebody uses what are effectively reference slides for a live presentation. People's attention is split between reading and making sense of dense information on screen, and the key important points you are trying to verbalize.

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

#82

Post by andi999 »

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…

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

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

#83

Post by CommieBobDole »

dmix wrote: post #14

> this foam, falling nine times faster than a fired bullet Wouldn’t the foam initially be travelling as fast as the spacecraft? So it’s just the time between it’s release and hitting the wing to accelerate.

That's correct. The CAIB report says it was traveling at a relative speed of "625 to 840 feet per second" at the time of impact.

Which technically is the speed of a bullet, but just barely. Nowhere near nine times.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/akamai.netstorage/anon.nasa-global/C...

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

#84

Post by bambax »

> Imagine if the engineers had put up a slide with just: “foam strike more than 600 times bigger than test data.” Maybe NASA would have listened. Maybe they wouldn’t have attempted re-entry.

Yes. This proves PowerPoint isn't to blame per se, but how it was used.

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

#85

Post by patagurbon »

tgflynn wrote: post #27

> There were a number of options. The astronauts could perform a spacewalk and visually inspect the hull. NASA could launch another Space Shuttle to pick the crew up. Or they could risk re-entry. That's not how I remember it being presented to the public. The official word at the time was that there were no feasible rescue options. Yes, they could have done a spacewalk to inspect the damage but if it had been bad the…

In this specific case, though, there was a chance for a rescue. Atlantis was being prepared for launch and could have been ready with a 5-day overlap. Whether or not that was presented to the public is another thing.

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

#86

Post by subhro »

Three kickass books I found very helpful in improving my slide-foo and hold the attention of my audience:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596522347/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b... https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470632011/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b... https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1101980168/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...

If you only have time to go through 1 book, I would recommend Slide:ology.

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

#87

Post by silvestrov »

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.

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

#88

Post by tgflynn »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #57
tgflynn wrote: post #27

> There were a number of options. The astronauts could perform a spacewalk and visually inspect the hull. NASA could launch another Space Shuttle to pick the crew up. Or they could risk re-entry. That's not how I remember it being presented to the public. The official word at the time was that there were no feasible rescue options. Yes, they could have done a spacewalk to inspect the damage but if it had been bad the…

https://spaceflightnow.com/columbia/report/rescue.html Atlantis was already scheduled for launch 41 days after Columbia. Columbia had ~30 days of air. NASA believed that Atlantis prep could have been accelerated and launched in time to attempt a rescue.

That's from a study that was done after the accident. As far as I'm aware NASA never even considered a rescue mission while Columbia was in orbit. They simply assumed that if the tiles were damaged there was nothing that could be done. It also seems that that assumption was what lead to the decision not to make efforts to assess the damage such as a space walk or the use of DoD spy satellites.

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

#89

Post by amenod »

TobTobXX wrote: post #56
giantg2 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title of this post is claiming this slide killed 7 people. That's a pretty bold and accusatory claim that seems to leave out the other failures, right?

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

Pretty bad title for a blog post that talks about misleading powerpoint presentations. Some readers might make conclusions from the title alone, instead of reading the whole text below.

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

#90

Post by marcellus23 »

tgflynn wrote: post #27

> There were a number of options. The astronauts could perform a spacewalk and visually inspect the hull. NASA could launch another Space Shuttle to pick the crew up. Or they could risk re-entry. That's not how I remember it being presented to the public. The official word at the time was that there were no feasible rescue options. Yes, they could have done a spacewalk to inspect the damage but if it had been bad the…

There was a possibility to rescue Columbia, but it would have been very difficult:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/the-audacious-rescue...

That there was "no other feasible plan" than re-entry was presumably because the risk of re-entry was assumed to be low. If the risk was correctly estimated to be higher, then it seems likely the rescue plan would become feasible (since, what other choice would NASA have?)

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