[rdtsc]

> Don't confuse a polished TED talk from a practiced speaker with a seminar from any random person in academia.

I don’t expect a TED talk but we’re still talking about MIT here. I’ve seen 8 year olds more articulated. I guess where I am from being called in front of the class and having to present or talk about the homework reading is common, so perhaps why it’s seen as exotic in US to be able tie words together without saying “like” after every other word, or slump and touch the hair every 10 seconds.

[dguest]

Yeah, MIT-affiliation certainly doesn't imply good presentation skills, I agree with you there.

I wonder about this too, but I think any academic institute asks a lot of PhD students. 90% of it isn't about giving a good public talk. Especially at PhD level it's much more about actually gathering a blob of data, distilling it into a (still nonlinear) structure, and then, finally, serializing it into a paper draft. In many cases the talk is something you do at the end as a formality.

This doesn't get any simpler just because you're at an institute with a fancy name. Your hypothetical 8 year old has one chance to get a cookie and had better be pretty articulate about it. This MIT-branded academic has a million other things going for them and can afford to slack off a bit on the presentation skills.

[rdtsc]

> Your hypothetical 8 year old has one chance to get a cookie and had better be pretty articulate about it. This MIT-branded academic has a million other things going for them and can afford to slack off a bit on the presentation skills.

Nah, they also can explain how potential and kinetic energy works, talk about how many types of stars are out there and so on. Not hypothetical at all. They do like cookies, too!

> This MIT-branded academic has a million other things going for them and can afford to slack off a bit on the presentation skills.

Well, I posit in this case their 1st out of 1 million other worries was to sound credible, because they may be asked about their methodology. Staying consistent while making things up does take considerable amount of effort and the speech will suffer. Listen to the segment I point out and see how they act. They sort of pretended they didn't hear the question at first.

[saagarjha]

Not everyone is a good public speaker. It's not like MIT selects applicants by looking at their presentation skills, or necessarily even teaches them.

[rdtsc]

The point here was that he cheated. He made things up and as soon as he was asked about methodology he pretended not to hear the question, slowed down, started to sprinkle “likes” everywhere, etc.

The question is more about how good of a cheater he is. Not very good as keeping a story straight takes up a considerable amount of effort and speech suffers.