Week 16: Conclusions and Introductions

While experimental strategy and results are essential components of a scientific presentation, presenting these materials well is not adequate for the audience to truly understand and appreciate the significance of the findings.  This week we will discuss two extremely important sections of any scientific presentation: Introduction and Conclusion. Through their structural location at two opposite poles of the presentation, they together assemble the entire talk as a “message to the audience”.

Introduction is the part where the presenter must capture the audience’s interest at the very beginning of the talk and influence their expectations throughout the presentation. A key concept in designing an Introduction is to provide the audience with a “perspective frame” --- a frame of mind to catch and correctly interpret the information that the audience is about to hear. 

In Conclusion (or Summary) the audience will expect that all the experimental results they have heard will be woven together in the context of the originally stated goals and perspective frame --- to create a compact yet comprehensive “take home message”.  The audience can then leave the auditorium feeling satisfied and confident that they have understood not only the presenter’s research results but also the significance of the presenter’s interpretations.