I think Edward Tufte was involved in the investigation on that disaster.
He has a legendary hatred of PowerPoint.
https://www.edwardtufte.com/product/the-cognitive-style-of-p...
The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster and the over-reliance on PowerPoint (2019)
81–90 of 185 posts
Re: The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster and the over-reliance on PowerPoint (2019)
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't remember the last time I saw a slide as mangled as the one in the article. It hurts my brain just reading it. But you are right, most engineers would consider that reasonable, while complaining about the "muggles" that just don't get it. As a Software Architect, one of my main responsibilities has been to take information presented like above and turn it into something that non-technical people can digest. Be…
If you want a slide to really hurt your brain search for “Iraq war PowerPoint slide” The principles of that slide apply to a lot of other circumstances.
Re: The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster and the over-reliance on PowerPoint (2019)
#83falling nine times faster than a fired bullet No, that's not how the physics works. The foam is moving at the same velocity as the shuttle when it breaks off, and had a short time to accelerate(decelerate) before hitting the shuttle.
THANK YOU. I've seen the velocity of the space shuttle quoted as the speed that the foam had when it hit Columbia's wing so many times, and it bugs the crap out of me.
Re: The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster and the over-reliance on PowerPoint (2019)
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
For reference, NASA asked the group of aerospace engineers ("rocket scientists") who designed the Space Shuttle to provide them with a technical analysis of the effects of foam impacts, and then subsequently lost the Columbia with all hands because they couldn't exercise more than a high school level of reading comprehension. The engineers presented the facts as they were understood, only stopping short of doing NASA…
It wasn't communicated properly as it says in the story. It is typical engineer reaction to question the reading comprehension ability of the readers.
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Re: The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster and the over-reliance on PowerPoint (2019)
#85I don't see how this has anything to do with PowerPoint. There wasn't clear communication; the medium was completely incidental to that. They could have been writing on a chalkboard and had a communication failure, does that mean that chalkboards should be blamed in that case?
Because the medium is not conducive to dense amount of technical information that readers are expected to use to make or understand decisions. Other similar mediums like a chalkboard were not singled out because the problem was identified with PowerPoint specifically. And it wasn't a choice of mediums all with similar problems, but slides vs papers. From the article, > “The Board views the endemic use of PowerPoint b…
But the problem, if anything, was that too much dense information was conveyed at all. Based on the analysis in the post, of the engineers had replaced that slide with one that said "Don't go forward with reentry", that might have saved lives better than any change in medium. To be clear, I'm in favor of abolishing PowerPoint for any non-ephemeral use, but the problem here was focus and framing of the info.
Re: The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster and the over-reliance on PowerPoint (2019)
#86falling nine times faster than a fired bullet No, that's not how the physics works. The foam is moving at the same velocity as the shuttle when it breaks off, and had a short time to accelerate(decelerate) before hitting the shuttle.
THANK YOU. I've seen the velocity of the space shuttle quoted as the speed that the foam had when it hit Columbia's wing so many times, and it bugs the crap out of me.
If that was the actual impact velocity of the foam, there would not be any doubt about whether the shuttle would survive reentry, that is if it even managed to make it all the way into space.
Re: The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster and the over-reliance on PowerPoint (2019)
#87Related:
Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30615114 - March 2022 (197 comments)
Death by PowerPoint: The slide that killed seven people - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19668161 - April 2019 (127 comments)
Re: The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster and the over-reliance on PowerPoint (2019)
#88This isn't a failure of PowerPoint. I work for NASA and we still use it all the time, and I'll assure anyone that the communication errors are rife regardless of what medium we're working in. The issue is differences in the way that in-the-weeds engineers and managers interpret technical information, which is alluded to in the article but the author still focuses on the bullets and the PowerPoint, as if rewriting sim…
>if you want to be heard... and really understood ... you have to say things up front that come across as overly simple, controversial, and poorly-founded, and then you can reveal your analyses as people question you.
I question your premise. :J
I'm just kidding, that's interesting I'll have to think about applying that. I don't suppose that would translate over to blogging? The fear of course is that one makes a statement and the commentariat thinks the speaker is full of it for not having provided backup instead of questioning. Maybe it's dependent on what type of forum it is.
Re: The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster and the over-reliance on PowerPoint (2019)
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the medium is not conducive to dense amount of technical information that readers are expected to use to make or understand decisions. Other similar mediums like a chalkboard were not singled out because the problem was identified with PowerPoint specifically. And it wasn't a choice of mediums all with similar problems, but slides vs papers. From the article, > “The Board views the endemic use of PowerPoint b…
But the problem, if anything, was that too much dense information was conveyed at all . Based on the analysis in the post, of the engineers had replaced that slide with one that said "Don't go forward with reentry", that might have saved lives better than any change in medium. To be clear, I'm in favor of abolishing PowerPoint for any non-ephemeral use, but the problem here was focus and framing of the info.
I agree completely. My deck would have been:
Slide 1: 48-point font
Don't go forward with reentry
* Our foam collision dataset from experimentation only included pieces below X cu in.
* Evidence points to this piece being at least Y cu in - 200 times more massive
* Catastrophic damage to the wing cannot be ruled out
Re: The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster and the over-reliance on PowerPoint (2019)
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the problem, if anything, was that too much dense information was conveyed at all . Based on the analysis in the post, of the engineers had replaced that slide with one that said "Don't go forward with reentry", that might have saved lives better than any change in medium. To be clear, I'm in favor of abolishing PowerPoint for any non-ephemeral use, but the problem here was focus and framing of the info.
I agree completely. My deck would have been: Slide 1: 48-point font Don't go forward with reentry Slide 2: 24-point font * Our foam collision dataset from experimentation only included pieces below X cu in. * Evidence points to this piece being at least Y cu in - 200 times more massive * Catastrophic damage to the wing cannot be ruled out This would have been a great PowerPoint, and I'm not convinced handing them onl…
Agree. Though to be honest I still think a paper with an executive summary that said "Don't go forward etc" would have probably been even better. Then the powerpoint slides can be illustrations of how far outside the testing data this is, simulations of possible damage, and other, you know, useful stuff.