For many years, I've used Latex to create my presentations, because I need to include mathematical formulae and symbols. However, it's sometimes quite cumbersome to use, and it's much harder to do "visual" effects (I'm not talking about animations, but for instance about arrows emphasizing a particular word, or connecting two words together, etc) compared to, say powerpoint.
I'm now trying to keep the maths to a minimum in my presentation (that was actually a really good advice given by a good speaker I talked to), but I still need them a bit, so my question is: what good (combined?) solution exist to create nice presentation that involve mathematical symbols?
Answer
I've found that the secret is (1) good tools to create equations, plus (2) liberal use of arrows and text, plus (3) animations linking the two.
I've found the following two programs to be indispensable for writing talks:
The goal is to make the math (1) visually distinctive, so that the reader can easily tell when you're discussing an equation, and (2) easy to interpret. Remember, in a paper, you have text such as "...where n is the number of..." after the equation is shown. This typically isn't done in research talks, and even worse, once you're off the slide, the reader has to simply remember what the equation was; they can't flip back a page.
My technique (you can see it in action in this presentation) is to put equations in a unique font (I use Times New Roman, with bolding and italics), and using the above tools to typeset equations in latex and insert them as images as necessary. As you introduce each equation, explain all the variables using text and arrows. Every variable should be explained... yes, this is slow, but learning is slow. If you're going to re-use the same equation multiple times, put it in the top-right corner of the slide - with arrows and text sometimes included - so that (1) they remember what you're talking about, and (2) so you can refer back to those equations.
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