Science is about competition, about collaboration and about communication, to mention a few keywords dominating the life of a scientist. In this post I will discuss a matter relating to collaboration and communication: sharing of slides.

Active scientists spend a large fraction – if not a major – fraction of their time to either listening to a scientific presentation, or preparing and giving their own presentation. Successful scientists have a collection of hundreds of slides and pick out the relevant combination shortly before they give their talk.

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Ten years years ago the major computer company Sun  Microsystems advertised in all media with the slogan: “The network is the computer”. And I must admit they knew where they were talking about. They saw the clouds coming. Sun has been taken over by Oracle in 2009.

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When you look at modern scientific journals you will find that in the majority of papers (some of) the results are presented in graphical form, from a simple black-and-white X-Y plot to sophisticated multicolor 3D-plots.

The data that are graphed come from various origins, like filled-out surveys, output of detectors, or mathematical programs. If the data are gathererd or produced by a commercial computer program, the developers of that program will try to supply graphing capabilities within the program. Keeping users tied to a program is of high commercial value. So Microsoft’s programs Word and Excel supply plotting facilities, although the capability is so rudimentary that it does not deserve the name.

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