Week 15: Presenting Data-Driven Insights

From Chart to Presentation

• Last week: refine visuals so the message is easier to see
• This week: organize those visuals into a story someone can act on
• A final presentation is not a report read aloud
• It is a decision-focused argument

Time: 3 minutes.

Connect directly to Week 14:

• A refined visual can make one point clear.
• A presentation has to connect several points into a coherent argument.
• The final presentation should help a decision-maker understand what matters and what should happen next.

The Presentation Has a Job

Your audience should leave knowing:

1. What problem or decision motivated the analysis
2. What evidence matters most
3. What your results imply about decisions or actions

Time: 2 minutes.

Emphasize that the goal is not to show all the work. The goal is to make the most important work usable.

Why This Skill Matters More Now

AI can generate charts, summaries, and even draft presentations

What it cannot do is:

• decide what matters
• persuade a specific audience
• build trust around a recommendation

Your advantage is not producing analysis; it is ensuring the analysis informs decision-making

There’s a growing argument that as AI gets better at analysis, the scarce skill shifts to persuasion. Not persuasion in a manipulative sense, but the ability to connect evidence to a decision and get someone to act.

Story Structure

Stories Need Tension

Good data presentations usually start with an imbalance¹:

What is happening now?

What should be happening instead?

The gap between those two states gives the audience a reason to care.

Time: 4 minutes.

Use Knaflic’s framing from the reading:

• Stories have a beginning, middle, and end.
• Conflict or tension helps make the story matter.
• In a data presentation, the tension is often the difference between the current state and the desired state.

1. Out of equilibrium.

Example Tension: Water cuts

Drought has reduced water availability in the district by 15%.

Water cuts are coming, but the district hasn’t decided how to apply them.

Beginning, Middle, End

Beginning

Problem, audience, context, imbalance

Middle

Evidence, interpretation, implications

End

Recommendation or call to action

Time: 4 minutes.

Tie this to their project presentations:

• Beginning: why this project exists.
• Middle: what the data show.
• End: what the audience should do with the result.

The Audience Is the Main Character

The story is not mainly about:

• how hard the project was
• every dataset you found
• every model you tried
• every graph you made

It is about the decision your audience needs to make.

Before building slides, answer:

• Who needs to act?
• What decision do they face?
• What evidence would change their mind?

Time: 4 minutes.

This is the most important audience framing point.

Ask students to think silently:

• Who is the decision-maker for your project?
• What do they care about?
• What action could your analysis inform?

Example: Frame the Water-Cut Story

Who needs to act?

The irrigation district board deciding how to allocate a 15% water cut.

What decision or question do they face?

Should the district apply the cut uniformly to all farms or target the cut to preserve higher-value water use?

What evidence would change their mind?

Evidence that one policy preserves more crop value than the other, and that the difference is large enough to matter for the district.

How this changes the deck

• lead with the policy choice
• show the value comparison
• end with a recommendation

Time: 3 minutes.

Use this to model the thought process explicitly:

• identify the audience in concrete terms
• name the real decision they face
• define what evidence would be persuasive

Then point out how these answers shape the presentation structure. The deck is no longer “here is the analysis we ran.” It becomes “here is the decision, the evidence, and the recommendation.”

AI can analyze but not own the decision

AI can tell you:

• what the data suggest
• what policy might maximize value

It cannot:

• take responsibility for the outcome
• understand stakeholder incentives
• persuade a board, client, or public

That is your role

Slides Logic

Titles Carry the Argument

Slide titles should be assertions, not labels.

Weak	Stronger
Results	Drought severity is associated with lower corn yields
Forecast	Demand is projected to exceed current capacity by July
Conclusion	The district should prioritize targeted water cuts

If someone reads only your slide titles in order, they should understand the story.

Time: 5 minutes.

This combines the deck.md principle with Knaflic’s horizontal logic.

Key point:

• The title should tell the audience what to take from the slide.
• The chart, table, or bullets should support that claim.

One Slide, One Idea

Each slide should make one claim.

If you hear yourself saying: “And also…”

you probably need another slide.

Time: 3 minutes.

This is from deck.md.

Emphasize that slides are cheap, but audience attention is limited. One idea per slide makes it easier for the speaker to present and easier for the audience to follow.

Avoid Two Failure Modes

The document pretending to be slides

• too much text
• too many full sentences
• audience reads ahead
• speaker becomes redundant

The mystery slide

• too sparse
• no context
• no clear claim
• useless without explanation

Time: 3 minutes.

The target is the middle:

• incomplete enough that the speaker matters
• structured enough that the audience can follow
• clear enough that the slide still communicates a point

Eight Minutes Requires Choices

Your final presentation should include:

• problem and decision context
• brief data and approach
• key results and interpretation
• implications and recommendations
• visuals that support the message

It should not walk through every technical detail.

For each slide, ask:

• What claim does this slide make?
• What evidence supports that claim?
• What can move to backup, appendix, or Q&A?

Time: 5 minutes.

This mirrors the project description.

Emphasize that “brief data and approach” means enough to trust the analysis, not a full methods lecture.

Connect to Week 14:

• Use the refined visuals students already made.
• Do not add visuals only because they were part of the work.

Slides Support the Speaker

In a live presentation:

• the slide shows the structure
• the speaker supplies the explanation
• transitions connect the ideas
• visuals carry the key evidence

If the slide says everything, the audience stops listening.

Time: 2 minutes.

Keep this light. The lecture is not mainly about delivery mechanics, but students should understand the speaker-slide relationship.

Your Comparative Advantage in an AI World

Old value:

• running the model
• producing the chart

New value:

• framing the decision
• interpreting the result
• persuading the audience

If AI can run the regression, your job is to explain why it matters

The bottleneck is no longer solving the problem—it’s getting people to agree on what to do about it.

Timing

A good 8-minute presentation might have:

• 1.5 minutes for the problem and decision context
• 2 minutes for data and approach
• 2 minutes for key results
• 2 minutes for implications and recommendations

1.5 minutes per slide is a good rule of thumb, but it depends on the content.

Final Checklist

Before presenting, check:

1. Is the audience clear?
2. Is the decision or problem clear?
3. Do the titles tell the story?
4. Does each slide make one point?
5. Do visuals support the message?
6. Is the call to action unmistakable?

Time: 2 minutes.

Close with the core standard:

The audience should not have to infer the point of the presentation. The team should make the point clear.

Next Week: Project Presentations

• Each team will have 8 minutes to present their project.
• 4 minutes for questions on logic, evidence, and implications.
• Written report also due Wed May 6.

Additional tips for presentations:

• Practice with group members.
• Time your presentation to ensure it fits within the allotted time.
• Know your analysis so you can answer question