Posters

Poster session at the 44th Actuarial Research Conference

By Emiliano Valdez and Ping Wang

A poster session is not something we commonly find at the annual actuarial research conference. But new to this year’s conference to be held at the University of Wisconsin in Madison is poster session. In lieu of traditional 15 or 20 minute talks, participants can present their research work in the form of scientific poster. According to the website (http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/cpurrin1/posteradvice.htm), a “scientific poster is a large document that can communicate your research at a scientific meeting, and is composed of a short title, an introduction to your burning question, an overview of your trendy experimental approach, your amazing results, some insightful discussion of aforementioned results, a listing of previously published articles that are important to your research, and some brief acknowledgement of the tremendous assistance and financial support conned from others—if all text is kept to a minimum, a person could fully read your poster in under 10 minutes.” This pretty much sums up what a poster is and what it is intended for.

Poster sessions are more commonly found at large conferences such as the annual American Statistical Association conference where there may be limited periods for which to arrange concurrent talk sessions for all participants who wish to present their work. Typically however for conferences with fewer participants such as many actuarial and insurance related meetings, arranging all the talks during the conference period is not an issue. Nevertheless, there are several advantages of having a poster session even for smaller conferences.

First, some argue that it is a more effective way of communicating information than a 15 or 20 minute talk. The poster session provides the opportunity for one-to-one interactions between the presenter and the interested participants, resulting in a possibly more engaging discussion of the work being presented. A reader can immediately interrupt the presenter with burning questions. In a talk, time allowed for questions and even follow up issues is quite limited. Second, because poster sessions are typically ongoing throughout the conference, the opportunities of reaching out to a wider audience abound. While a special time period is usually allotted for poster sessions at the conference, the posters may remain at the designated site allowing participants to view at several times during the conference. Although the researcher may not be present at the time a participant views the poster, he or she can later on contact the author for additional details.  Third, poster sessions are usually more effective for demonstrating statistical software, spreadsheets, and algorithms. This is because the interested participants are allowed a hands-on opportunity to tinker with the software/spreadsheets/algorithms, giving readers a better sense of how they work. What’s more,  the presenter may even receive immediate feedback on how to improve navigating the software. Fourth, with poster sessions, participants may be allowed the opportunity to present several bodies of work at the conference. A participant may give a 15 or 20 minute on one research work, but at the same time, he or she may wish to present in a poster session another completed work or an innovation in progress where the poster presenter may be able to gather insightful thoughts from other participants.

At this year’s Actuarial Research Conference in Madison, incentives will be provided to encourage participation in the poster session. Students will be allowed to register at a reduced rate if they just attend the conference or if they attend and present at a poster session.

Below are some general tips for preparing a scientific poster.

• Choose the right title that sums your work and at the same time triggers an interest. Remember, there are other posters being presented and the participants have limited time to go through all the posters. Make the title the most prominent in your poster – big and bold enough for everyone passing by to see.

• Beware of the time. Avoid making long posters because this could cause a disinterest to the viewing participants. Use fewer words if possible and the rule of thumb is the viewer should be able to go through your poster in at most 10 minutes.

• Remember this is a visual presentation. It is important to create the poster in an organized sequence explaining the ideas of your work and results, and simultaneously visually appealing to the eye. If it is possible to provide a graphical display of your results, do it – as the cliché goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. 

If you are considering creating a poster, check out some examples from the American Statistical Association at: http://stat-computing.org/dataexpo/2006/entries.html

Poster session at Society for Neuroscience, showing typical congestion.