Although I believe PowerPoint is overrated to some extent, I think Edward Tufte is taking the his criticism to extreme. PowerPoints are extremely reliable in terms of learning information in school that will more than likely be given in a multiple choice context. This type of test does not require sentences and full sentences would do nothing besides take up space with a few filler words. It is easier, in a business setting and school setting, to keep one’s attention by continuously changing the information by switching slides rather than to stare at an essay format document for a long period of time with an immense amount of information. What Mr. Tufte thinks is “good”, I disagree with. Personally, I would not pay a bit of attention to that slide. It is bland and just has a lot of meaningless numbers. The slide he considers “bad” however, grabs my attention with the different colors and types of charts. It expresses the information in multiple ways leaving the audience to decide which way they can interpret and comprehend the information better.

With my opinion on PowerPoint stated above, this does not mean I do not believe essays, reports, and full sentences should never be used. Journalism, English, and other majors or careers that require full sentences and depth should not rely on PowerPoint since it is irrelevant to their job, as it obviously is to Tufte’s since he is a blogger and needs that depth and full sentences over bullet points. On the contrary, science and math majors don’t really use details and essays regularly. Most of their information comes from charts, tables, and information that cannot be distorted and interpreted in more than one way; Powerpoint is an extremely useful tool for these people to memorize information. In all, I agree with Tufte in his reasoning that PowerPoint is used as a substitute instead of supplementing information but in some fields, I believe that is the best learning technique.