Tuesday, January 22, 2013

TED Talks: "Talk Nerdy to Me" -Andrew Anderson


The YouTube video you had us watch this week, TED Talks: “Talk Nerdy to Me,” the speaker, Melissa Marshall, speaks about the importance of good communication, specifically between the scientific community and the normally, day to day people in society.

She starts her presentation with a question, what does your science have to do with my life?  For example, last week I was sitting in my biology class listening to my professor lecture on and on as she does most days.  She was talking about parts of DNA and, as usual, I had no idea what any of it really meant.  The next day I went to one of the teaching assistants and they used a real life example to help me really understand the concepts.  They took my trait of having blue eyes and then went backwards and showed me what my parents must have had.  They removed all of the “jargon” so that I understood it.  In no way at all did they dumb it down, they just presented the information in a way that I was able to more readily receive the information.  The quote Ms. Marshall used from Albert Einstein, “Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler,” is especially prevalent when put into the context of my life. 

Everyone in this day and age have different interests, talents, and fields of study.  Because of this, this talk is very important.  We don’t always understand everything about others but this doesn't mean we’re not interested.  We are not dumb, just explaining things in a different way is a good idea and will break down walls between different groups of people.  In this new, evolving society that we live in today, changing the way we communicate will lead to a more intelligent and accepting culture that can better change the world in a positive way.

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