What advice do you have for giving a talk on a mathematical research paper to people in other fields in science (not physics nor astronomy) but without lot of math background?
Thanks.
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$\begingroup$ Your tags suggest that you are specifically asking about giving a presentation on your research in the context of a job application/interview. Is this what you mean? $\endgroup$– Yemon ChoiCommented Feb 9, 2011 at 8:45
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6$\begingroup$ Voting to close as "off topic". Advice questions are very hard to formulate precisely, and if made precise enough to get proper answers then they are often too precise to be useful to anyone else. That said, here's some advice worth the amount you're paying for it: know thyself and know thine audience. Then give the talk that they will understand and you won't be ashamed of. $\endgroup$– Andrew StaceyCommented Feb 9, 2011 at 9:55
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$\begingroup$ The context of that question seems to be different; still some of the answers might be interesting to you mathoverflow.net/questions/47214/… $\endgroup$– user9072Commented Feb 9, 2011 at 12:42
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2 Answers
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Without a stated goal, giving advice seems pointless. Anyway, a good rule in general is "know your audience". Find one or two points that they might like, and pitch the talk around that.
Gerhard "Ask Me About System Design" Paseman, 2011.02.08
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$\begingroup$ And the companion piece of advice: learn to deal when the audience end up being different from what you expected or what was promised. $\endgroup$ Commented Feb 9, 2011 at 14:02
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Try to be the less technical as you can.
Try to be less technical as you can means, for the ones who don't understand: "focus on the ideas, don't try to prove everything, try to make things the simplest you can to emphasize the main points without loosing your interlocutor into technical details that any mathematician knows very well, and non mathematician cannot appreciate". It is simple to make things look like complicated, it is more difficult to make complicate things simple, and it is much more appreciated.
In spite of the -1, I maintain my advice.