Guidance for Presentations

Below are some guidelines and suggestions for making effective presentations with clearly presented results. These guidelines are generally applicable, but should especially be followed when presenting GlueX results at conferences, workshops, or other public venues.

General Guidelines and Tips

• Some general resources:
  • APS Speaker Tips & Guidelines
  • Presentation Tips for GlueX Junior Scientists (Zisis). Recording HERE
  • Presentation Tips (from "Getting Started at GlueX" wiki page)

• Consider the structure of your talk carefully. Most people outside the Collaboration are most interested in the physics content of your presentation, and will assume that the technical details are substantially correct if we are allowing you to present these results in a public forum.
  • Present the 10,000 ft view of your analysis and how it connects to GlueX goals in the introductory slides
  • Explain your methodology clearly
  • Minimize discussion of event selections
  • Discuss final results and their implications
• Please acknowledge that you are giving the talk on behalf of the GlueX Collaboration when appropriate, either by including the GlueX logo on the title page, and/or that you are giving the talk "on behalf of the GlueX Collaboration"
• Refer to data as belong to "GlueX-I", "GlueX-II", "PrimEx-η", or some percentage of these. [link]. The run period names like "2017-01" are internal jargon.
  • Also, don't refer to PAC days - this is again JLab jargon
  • Generally, showing consistency between different run periods is useful to show inside the Collaboration to illustrate the stability of your results, but the results should be combined or averaged when shown publicly
• Your figures are your most important results! Make sure they are clearly labeled and easy to understand. See more detailed suggestions below in "Figure Style Guidelines"
• If you are using figures not from a GlueX publication, they should contain the "GlueX preliminary" logo from this location.
  • The logo should be of small to moderate size in a noticeable area, not faded or used as a watermark.
• Slides should be labeled with page numbers.
• All axes should be labeled including their units. The y-axis labels for histograms should include units, e.g., “candidates / 10 MeV” or “events / 10 MeV”, as appropriate
  • If reconstructing, e.g., eta -> gamma gamma, and you want to make a histogram of the invariant mass, the axis label should be M(γγ) not M(η). You are making a histogram of η candidates and not necessarily η's.
• If you include references to other work, please use some standard or abbreviated reference format, do not include the text of a URL. You can include an inline link to a webpage.
  • For example, use "GlueX, Phys. Rev. C 95, 042201 (2017)", "PRC 95, 042201 (2017)", or "arXiv:1701.08123", not "https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.95.042201"
• For final results, be clear about what uncertainties are being shown (statistical only, statistical and some systematic, ...)
• To acknowledge our funding agencies and other supporting organizations, on some slide (either at the beginning or the end of your talk) include either "GlueX Acknowledgements:" or "GlueX acknowledges the support of several funding agencies and computing facilities:" followed by "http://gluex.org/thanks"
  • Can also include this QR code: 50px

Practice Talk Guidelines

• Present the practice talk as will be shown at the conference. You will be timed.
• Include only the plots that will be shown at the conference in the main part of your slides. Alternate or other plots should be in the backup slides.
• Provide ample supporting details (separate analyses for each run period, fits, different cut evaluations, etc.) in the backup slides.
• Plots should be clearly labelled: axes, title, cuts/conditions, etc.
• Slides should contain plots *and* supporting/brief text. Multi-panels of plots without text or without writing the point/conclusion of the slide are discouraged.
• Overlay curves if trying to make a point about the effect of different cuts, or background subtractions, etc.
• Following the presentation, a discussion will take place on your results. That will be followed by constructive feedback on your slides and how you phrased things.

Figure Style Guidelines

Please follow the guidelines below to help make sure your figures are clear and easy to read. A ROOT script to configure a new default style is given below to get you started. For previously generated histograms, you might have to use the function gROOT->ForceStyle() for this to apply.

gluex_style.C

void gluex_style() {
	auto gluex_style = new TStyle("GlueX","Default GlueX Style");

        gluex_style->SetCanvasBorderMode(0);
        gluex_style->SetPadBorderMode(0);
        gluex_style->SetPadColor(0);
        gluex_style->SetCanvasColor(0);
        gluex_style->SetTitleColor(0);
        gluex_style->SetStatColor(0);


	// some default window sizes
	gluex_style->SetCanvasDefW(800);
	gluex_style->SetCanvasDefH(600);

	// let's change the default margins
	gluex_style->SetPadBottomMargin(0.15);
	gluex_style->SetPadLeftMargin(0.15);
	gluex_style->SetPadTopMargin(0.05);
	gluex_style->SetPadRightMargin(0.08);

	// axis labels and settings
        gluex_style->SetStripDecimals(0);
 	gluex_style->SetLabelSize(0.055,"xyz"); // size of axis value font
 	gluex_style->SetTitleSize(0.06,"xyz"); // size of axis title font
 	gluex_style->SetTitleFont(42,"xyz"); // font option
 	gluex_style->SetLabelFont(42,"xyz"); 
 	gluex_style->SetTitleOffset(1.2,"y"); 
 	gluex_style->SetLabelOffset(0.01,"xyz");   // stop collisions of "0"s at the origin
 	
 	
	// histogram settings
	gluex_style->SetOptStat(0);     // no stats box by default
	gluex_style->SetOptTitle(0);    // no title by default
	gluex_style->SetHistLineWidth(2); 

	// various histogram fill colors
	// various histogram fill colors
	gluex_style->SetHistFillColor(920);   // grey
	//gluex_style->SetHistFillColor(5);  // yellow
	//gluex_style->SetHistFillColor(38);   // pale blue
	//gluex_style->SetHistFillColor(600-7);   // blue
	//gluex_style->SetHistFillColor(632-4);   // red
	//gluex_style->SetHistFillColor(416+1);   // green

 	//gluex_style->SetPadGridX(1);  // Beni likes this
 	//gluex_style->SetPadGridY(1); 	

	// pick a palette for 2D plots
	gluex_style->SetPalette(kViridis);
	//gluex_style->SetPalette(kBird);  // default
	//gluex_style->SetPalette(kDarkBodyRadiator);  // I like this one better...


	gluex_style->cd();
}

• Format: Vector graphic format (PDF preferred), where lines and text have not been rendered.
• Font: Lettering should be in a sans-serif typeface, preferably Helvetica or Arial
• Text size: All lettering should be visible from the back of an auditorium for a figure filling 1/4 of the area of the screen.
  • ROOT minimum text size 0.04, recommended axis label and title sizes 0.06.
• For the standard style one should call the member function of TAxis class called SetDecimals(). This ensures that all tick mark labels are printed to the same precision, e.g., 0.8 1.0 1.2 … instead of 0.8 1 1.2 …
• Use a clear background with unbroken lines and black-white contrast as much as possible.
• Avoid small open symbols that may "fill in", small dots and decimal points, and shading or cross-hatching that is not coarse enough to show up when printed
• Use both shape and color to distinguish symbols from different graphs
• Choose color pairings other than red/blue for better contrast
• Figures containing preliminary results should have the "GlueX Preliminary" logo, as found here.
• Other logos: Various formats
• Other common detector figures: on gluexweb

Examples of histogram style

File:Hist example grey.png

Example histogram with grey shading

File:Hist example blue.png

Example histogram with blue shading

File:Hist example green.png

Example histogram with green shading

Example of graph style

example_graph.C (load gluex_style.C first)

{
   double x[] = {0, 1, 2, 3, 4};
   double y[] = {0, 2, 4, 1, 3};

   // offset other data sets slightly in x
   double x2[] = {0.15, 1.15, 2.15, 3.15, 4.15};
   double y2[] = {0.3, 2.2, 3.8, 1.1, 2.7};

   double x3[] = {-0.15, 0.85, 1.85, 2.85, 3.85};
   double y3[] = {-0.2, 1.9, 4.3, 1.4, 3.2};

   //double ex[] = {0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5};
   double ex[] = {0., 0., 0., 0., 0.};
   double ey[] = {1, 0.5, 1, 0.5, 1};

   auto ge = new TGraphErrors(5, x, y, ex, ey);
   auto ge2 = new TGraphErrors(5, x2, y2, ex, ey);
   auto ge3 = new TGraphErrors(5, x3, y3, ex, ey);

   ge->SetMarkerStyle(20);
   ge->SetMarkerSize(1.7);
   ge->SetMarkerColor(600-7);
   ge->SetLineWidth(2.);
   ge->SetLineColor(600-7);

   ge2->SetMarkerStyle(21);
   ge2->SetMarkerSize(1.7);
   ge2->SetMarkerColor(632-4);
   ge2->SetLineWidth(2.);
   ge2->SetLineColor(632-4);

   ge3->SetMarkerStyle(22);
   ge3->SetMarkerSize(2.);
   ge3->SetMarkerColor(416+1);
   ge3->SetLineWidth(2.);
   ge3->SetLineColor(416+1);

   ge3->GetXaxis()->SetTitle("Data set");
   ge3->GetYaxis()->SetTitle("Scale Factor");

   ge3->Draw("ap");
   ge2->Draw("p");
   ge->Draw("p");
   
}

File:Graph example.png

Example graph