Presentation as a Sales Pitch?

It is not uncommon to hear these days: “make your presentation to sell your ideas”, “a presentation is a sales pitch” etc. What was earlier confined mostly to marketing and sales departments is now making its way to other places as well, including academia. Imagine going to attend a talk titled “Truth and Lies About XX” and after spending some time there one realizes that the presentation has no relation to the title at all! The catchy title was just meant to attract people but it lacked substance. Over the past few years, I have come across quite a number of such presentations where the title and the content are very unrelated. The sad part is that most of these presenters walk away with impunity without any member of the audience ever making a remark with respect to the gap between the title and the content. I find this practice not only misleading but also unethical. Most of the time, people come to attend a presentation with a certain notion of it based on its synopsis, speaker’s bio-data  and the title. The title plays a very crucial role in creating excitement. However, I don’t think that it should go so far as to end up unrelated to the content.

I agree with the view that one needs to polish and shape one’s presentation to help the audience follow it; that one needs to choose words and phrases carefully to highlight the main points, one’s contributions etc. However, I don’t agree with a blatant disregard for the audience’s intellect that becomes visible when such titles are chosen. The presenters may say that it was unintentional and that they were only concerned with making it more fancy. However, the fact  that it was unintentional itself says that the presenters did not think deep enough about their target audience.

When people , who are not sales professionals, like engineers, scientists, doctors, lawyers etc. try to become like them, they often forget that there are both good and bad salesmen. That is why they teach sales and marketing in business schools. If it were just a matter of catchy title and pompous claims, business schools would not need to teach the subject. In their effort to sell their ideas, the presenters also forget that the audience has its own mind. In most cases, it won’t simply buy whatever is presented to it no matter how charismatic or fancy the salesman is. Of course, if a presenter knows that a certain audience has a bias, he can use all the tricks to impress the people. In general, I don’t think it is a good idea to keep emphasizing the “sales pitch” version of non-sales related presentations. Instead, what should be emphasized more is to connect truthfully with the audience.

The World as a State Machine

A state machine is basically a model of computation which helps one analyze the effects of input on a system. This system can remain in different states throughout its life cycle though in only one state at a time. It can transition from one state to another depending on some input. Every state machine has a start state and it progresses from there to other states eventually leading to an end state. Note that it is possible to reach the end state from any intermediate state as well as the start state. It depends on the system being modeled. Also, the output of each state may depend on the current state as well the inputs to that state.  Thus state machines model reactive systems i.e. systems which react. A good description of state machines can be found here. Note that the description there is related to finite state machines, which are so called because they have finite number of states. State machines are used in different fields of study not just electrical or computer engineering. They are used in biology, mathematics, linguistics etc. They also have different variants each trying to capture some additional parameters of a system which I would not go into. You can read about them at the link mentioned earlier.

I was wondering if the world can be modeled as a state machine. I think that the world in fact is a state machine except that its end state is unknown. Those with absolute faith in cosmological physics would state that the “Big Bang” can be considered as the start  state. Those with religious views might consider something else as the start state.  The beauty of this world being considered as a state machine lies in the fact that it does not matter whether you believe in science or not. It does not matter whether you have more of a religious bent of mind and would like to see the world from a religious or theological perspective or whether you want to see it only from a scientific standpoint. Either way, the world can be modeled as a state machine. You get to choose the start state depending on which viewpoint you are more comfortable with. In both the cases, the world is in fact a reactive system. It can even be considered as an aggregation of interacting state machines where each state machine can represent the economic, social, political, religious and scientific state of the world. And nobody would deny that all these concepts influence each other. Every electrical or computer engineering student studies about Moore and Mealy state machines. To them, the world is probably a Mealy state machine though not strictly so: the outputs in any state that this world resides in is dependent not only on the current inputs but also on the current state. If we look around us, it sounds so true,   does it not? However, this state machine is extremely complex!

Can a computer do envy-free divison?

We have all studied division. In the world of simple mathematics, 8 divided by 2 is always 4.  But what about dividing a cake into 2 equal pieces? A computer program can always divide 8 by 2 and give 4 as answer, but can a computer program divide a cake into 2 equal pieces? Let us make it a bit more complicated. Say the cake has to be divided between persons A and B and in such a way that neither of them feels that the other person got more. This means that neither A or B will envy the share received by the other. So here the notion of equal division has to be understood in the context of the result leading to an envy-free solution. This is the subject of “Fair Division” also known as cake cutting problem. It is studied in politics, mathematics, economics and the like. Methods and algorithms have been proposed to achieve fair division but all require inputs from the parties involved in the division at different stages of the procedure. Note that these inputs need not be disclosed as these could be the feelings/assumptions/conclusions running in the minds of the parties involved. This means that different inputs at different stages can lead to different outcomes. Does it remind of “Observer Effect” in Physics? Yes. The inputs(observation of a current state of division) by a party affects the outcome of division (phenomenon being observed). It is impossible (?) for a computer to solve a problem of this type entirely on its own. Such problems arise routinely in allocation of goods, dispute resolution, negotiation of  treaties etc.

Borrowing terms from economics, a number can be treated as ‘a homogeneous good’ while a cake is essentially ‘a heterogeneous good’ as different parts of it can taste different. Hence, its envy-free division is far more complicated. If you are interested, try to read “Fair Division-From cake-cutting to dispute resolution“, an excellent book by Steven J. Brams (political scientist) and Alan D. Taylor (mathematician).