Finally! I've got invited for an interview for a permanent job (in mathematics), and now I have two weeks to prepare myself. Part of the process is giving a 25 minutes talk about some exciting recent piece of research. The first half should be accessible to a 2nd year student, and the audience is the faculty members.
I was advised by one of my colleagues to take this quite seriously (not that I wouldn't). And having identified a few candidate talks, I am now torn between the obvious question:
Chalk or beamer?
Pro-Chalk reasons:
- Talks go slower, so you can be sure more people follow.
- More impressive to hear a good chalk talk.
Con-Chalk reasons:
- Black suit.
- Cover less ground, and possibly not enough actual new research (even considering the fact this talk will have no proofs and will just serve as an overview).
Pro-Beamer reasons:
- Black suit.
- No need to spend times writing complicated definitions, equations, or otherwise long and mathy statements.
- Helps with time management.
Con-Beamer reasons:
- It's easier to gloss over some of the details that you really should focus on.
- It's a lot easier for people to momentarily lose focus and lose the entire talk because of a missed slide.
- It gives an illusion of help with time management.
So any advice would be helpful.