1. Useful PowerPoint Tips
Copyright (c) 2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. This material is intended solely for educational use by licensed users of LearningStats. It may not be copied or resold for profit.

2. Six PowerPoint Tips for Statistics
Learn to capture and paste screens
Use Paste Special routinely
Not too many graphs
Use text boxes or AutoShapes
Match font and back color
Make tables in Excel or Word

3. Screen Capture: Entire Window
Click PrintScrn to capture the entire screen. Edit in Paint, if required. Use Paste Special to paste the graphic in your PowerPoint slide as Device Independent Bitmap.
Hint: After pasting the graphic, click it to format it (size, layout, etc).

4. Screen Capture: Active Window
Click Alt-PrintScrn to capture only the active window (indicated by highlighted blue bar in this example). Use Paste Special to paste the graphic in your PowerPoint slide as Device Independent Bitmap.
Hint: After pasting the graphic, click it to format it (size, layout, etc).

5. Paste Special
Always use Paste Special to paste anything into your Word document or PowerPoint presentation. The Paste default may retain the link to the originating application (e.g., Minitab Graph Object). But often you don’t want the link to be active. Better to choose Picture.
Hint: If you just use Paste you will retain the link to Minitab. But than what happens when you shut down Minitab??

6. How Many Graphs?
It depends on their size and level of detail. For simple graphs, maybe 4 or even 6.
Visual Statistics screens  2001 by McGraw-Hill. Used with permission.

7. How Many Graphs?
For complex simple graphs with lots of detail, even 2 may be too many (e.g., readability of fonts)
Visual Statistics screens  2001 by McGraw-Hill. Used with permission.

8. Text Boxes
To add a text box, click on the drawing tool bar. If you don’t see it, click View > Toolbars > Drawing.

9. This is where you get them!
AutoShapes
Hint: Help the audience see the man point by annotating your slides with colorful AutoShapes.
This is where you get them!

10. Poor Color Schemes
Dark background, dark fonts - hard to read!

11. Poor Color Schemes
Light background, light fonts - hard to read!

12. Excel Tables
Tables are easier to create and format in Excel than in Powerpoint. Then we copy and paste the table.

13. Excel Tables: Paste
Select cells, copy the selection, and Paste Special > Bitmap if you want to keep the same appearance. This graphic was resized and a blue border was added.

14. Excel Tables: Paste Picture
Use Paste Special > Picture (Enhanced Metafile) to keep the same appearance. Default is transparent background (but here it’s hard to read the dark font on green background). Symbols like p are rendered incorrectly if you use Picture (Windows Metafile) instead of Picture (Enhanced Metafile) even though these two options sound similar.

15. Word Tables: Paste
You can create tables in Word and then copy them to a PowerPoint slide using Paste. But you may then have to edit the table. For example, these equations had to be brought to the front and then dragged into their table cells. We also had to change the table’s background color to white so it would show up on a green slide.
Statistic
Formula
Excel Formula
Pro
Con
Mean
=AVERAGE(Data)
Familiar and uses all the sample information.
Influenced by extreme values.
Median
Middle value in sorted array
=MEDIAN(Data)
Robust when extreme data values exist.
Ignores extremes and can be affected by gaps in data values.
Mode
Most frequently occurring data value
=MODE(Data)
Useful for attribute data or discrete data with a small range.
May not be unique, and is not helpful for continuous data.
Midrange
=0.5*(MIN(Data)
+MAX(Data))
Easy to understand and calculate.
Influenced by extreme values and ignores most data values.
Geometric mean (G)
=GEOMEAN(Data)
Useful for growth rates and mitigates high extremes.
Less familiar and requires positive data.
Trimmed mean
Same as the mean except omit highest and lowest p% of data values (e.g., 5%)
=TRMEAN(Data, %)
Mitigates effects of extreme values.
Excludes some data values that could be relevant.

16. Word Tables: Paste Picture
If the table contains equations or graphs, you might want to try Paste Special > Picture. Here, we used Format > Colors and LInes > Fill to change the background color to white so it would be visible on a green slide. Also a blue border was added.
Hint: You can’t edit the text. It’s a Picture.