UPDATE: Follow-up here.
This sounds like a survey whose broader implications I might wish were true, but probably aren’t:
A study published in the April issue of British Educational Research Journal found that 59 percent of students in a new survey reported that at least half of their lectures were boring, and that PowerPoint was one of the dullest methods they saw. The survey consisted of 211 students at a university in England and was conducted by researchers at the University of Central Lancashire.
Students in the survey gave low marks not just to PowerPoint, but also to all kinds of computer-assisted classroom activities, even interactive exercises in computer labs. “The least boring teaching methods were found to be seminars, practical sessions, and group discussions,” said the report. In other words, tech-free classrooms were the most engaging.
My confession: I use Keynote (the Mactastic replacement for PowerPoint) for big lecture courses, particularly the survey of US history 1865-present. But pretty reliably once a year the system flakes out and I end up teaching the class without it. Which bothers me not at all. But I believe I can see the students getting restless. For US intellectual history I don’t use Keynote, as the concepts generally don’t benefit from visual representation. Increasingly I use it for my research talks, though. I believe it’s becoming a norm.
If there’s any truth to the survey, I believe it’s that most people use these tools badly. You see an awful lot of computer presentations with way too much tiny text per slide, or slides that are basically the lecturer’s notes, or the PowerPoint version of Ken Burns: show somebody’s face while you’re talking about them.
Whereas there are of course perfectly good uses of visual media in lectures. Such uses can even engage the students: “What does the graph tell us?” Or, “What do you think this map shows?”
Answer below the fold.
Originally here; it’s hard to draw this picture with chalk.
The Edge of the American West 
48 comments
July 20, 2009 at 10:05 am
Eural
“If there’s any truth to the survey, I believe it’s that most people use these tools badly.”
Absolutely! I teach a high school social studies class and every year part of the classwork requires the students to make a PowerPoint for a class topic. We go through the details of what makes a good one versus a bad one and even with that and the fact that most of them have been using PowerPoint since elementary school I still get confusing, text-laden, ponderous presentations. It seems criminal to have such a visually rich and compelling supplement to lectures and not be able to use it effectively.
July 20, 2009 at 10:26 am
Erik Lund
Why do people drink Coke in Morocco, but not the former Spanish Sahara? Is it a political thing? Also, Mongolia.
July 20, 2009 at 10:29 am
eric
See? Good visual aids can provoke discussion!
July 20, 2009 at 10:35 am
chris y
Why do people drink Coke in Morocco, but not the former Spanish Sahara?
No data for Western Sahara, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Burma and Mongolia. It says so.
July 20, 2009 at 10:39 am
Charlieford
Most people do everything badly, eric.
I use graphics only when I must–as with your map, if it’s just beyond my ken or ability to convey. But I’ve found you can find just about anything using google images. Sometimes I find them ahead of time and stack them up or sometimes I find them in real time. But I do it erratically–not every class–so it won’t become predictable. And except for very rarely, the pedagogical gain is pretty minimal.
As is virtually always the case, the advocates of technology miss the absolutely essential attraction of the human, with all its imperfections, in good teaching. Good teaching gets and fixes attention–it isn’t automatically generated by a flawless presentation. In that sense a humorously incompetent hand-drawn map is far more effective than the professional one.
The Chronicle article misses this when it says power-point has been an advance over chalk. Rather, each (or all) have their pros and cons, and it’s unquestionably best if students are exposed to a wide variety of pedagogies over the course of the day or week.
The artistic/handwriting quirks and foibles and other human limitations of the professor have always been among the more memorable aspects of a lecture, help to create interest and anticipation, and serve to keep students alert to the content. Technocrats can’t begin to grasp that. But they’re the folk who are always telling us things like, “every statistical measure we have shows we’re” [insert deadly optimistic idiocy of your choice here].
July 20, 2009 at 10:41 am
Bourgeois Nerd
What’s up with Norway and Iceland? I would think those Nordic social democrats would be all about bracing herring tea or some such, not the Devil Corn Syrup. And the Greeks are apparently not drinking enough ouzo.
As for Western Sahara and Mongolia and the other white countries, perhaps it’s more that there aren’t any official bottling plants or distributors in those countries, thus making it hard to tally how much is being consumed?
July 20, 2009 at 10:41 am
grackle
As can not-looking-closely-at-the-visual-aids-and jumping to conclusions- figures not available probably doesn’t mean ‘does not drink Coke.’
I think you are right about using visuals; if so inclined, (as apparently many are tempted) they can be the quintessential lazy man’s tool.
Otherwise, per the example, someone is doing my part in the Coke consumption area, and I am very grateful.
July 20, 2009 at 10:52 am
touhy
“…I’d like to buy the world a Coke, and keep it company…It’s the Real Thing!…”
July 20, 2009 at 11:12 am
kevin
C-I-L-L My Laptop.
July 20, 2009 at 11:23 am
Prof_B
The worst part of being in the army after, say, 1994 or so was, for me, PowerPoint. Just look at the typical military briefing slide, and it’s perfectly obvious why. They are the anti-Rosetta Stones, concocted by masters of obfuscation and irrelevance. They’re like plastic bananas — they look good but have no nutritional value.
Often — 7 times out of 10? 8? 9? — the “slide” is begrudgingly adopted by the otherwise technologically unsophisticated faculty member as a substitute for teaching. And the students — at least my students — are all-too-willing to dutifully copy down every bullet point, “lecture” sessions becoming little more than dictation sessions.
But even I, as much as I hate it, had to bow to the inevitable. In a lecture hall with 300 students, I can’t write clearly enough (or largely enough) on a chalkboard, and for the representation of graphical data, maps, etc., it’s hard to beat a 12-foot high, full-color image.
It doesn’t get better than Tufte’s “Cognitive Style of PowerPoint”
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint
July 20, 2009 at 11:38 am
Michael Elliott
I’ve been working with our teaching-technology folks for a while on training programs for graduate students on the use of technology in the classroom. Over time, I’ve become convinced that the skillful use of technology in teaching is, well, a skill that requires time and resources to develop. Very few professors have had the opportunity to pursue this kind of training — or even any training in pedagogy — and even fewer have taken advantages of the opportunities that are available. No wonder students are frustrated.
Meanwhile, given the relationship between Coca-Cola and my university, your map reminds me that I need to send Norway a thank-you card.
July 20, 2009 at 11:52 am
Vance
I agree with Eric’s points, but there’s a sort of excluded middle. He begins by bemoaning PowerPoint, then “on the other hands” with a demonstration that visual aids have value. It’s a good example, but surely nobody doubted that. The question is whether there’s a good use (in addition to the well-known bad uses) for what’s characteristic of PowerPoint — a sequence of bulleted outlines. I would say that they can be used well, and can make the points more memorable than an average speaker could make them alone.
When I started grad school in computer science, in 1989, handwritten transparencies were still the norm. It wasn’t many years before we were using software — SliTeX to begin with, in that subculture. There was an immediate change of style, with more slides for a given amount of material, even though the sheets were costly.
July 20, 2009 at 11:56 am
Ahistoricality
Clearly I’m not doing my patriotic duty, because my Coca-cola consumption is way below 19.5 gallons per year. Even counting diet Dr. Pepper — and that’s a whole other chart, of course — I can’t possibly be over 10.
July 20, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Zora
The best teaching aid might be a wiki. I learned a heck of a lot during the time I contributed to Wikipedia (until I tired of drudgery and hostility). Thumbing through one’s books madly, or googling furiously, to come up with the cite that will absolute SMASH your idiot opponent brings all the excitement of warfare to learning. I never would have learned as much as I did about early Islamic history if I hadn’t been going at it hammer and tongs with pious Muslims, militant Salafis, and resentful Shi’as. Oh yes, and ranting Islamophobes. (My absolute best day evar was the day that I was called an “Islamofascist bitch” by one editor and a “Zionist enforcer” by another.)
The big Wikipedia may be too rough for students, but something like a class or school wiki might preserve enough of the same dynamic to spur learning.
July 20, 2009 at 12:11 pm
silbey
Have we established that “not being boring” is the same thing as “good teaching”? We’re rightly skeptical of student evaluations as guides to good teaching, but this study seems to me to be a student evaluation writ large.
July 20, 2009 at 12:23 pm
eric
a humorously incompetent hand-drawn map is far more effective than the professional one
My 8th-grade history teacher brilliantly hand-drew — and taught us all to hand-draw! — a map of the US, with labeled lines for territorial boundaries (i.e., borders of Louisiana purchase, Lake of the Woods, etc.) It was great.
But it’s hard to do a map of the world with all that shading.
I don’t think we fundamentally disagree, Charlie. Once, only two years ago, I gave a full lecture while seated on the front of the classroom’s chemistry set-up table, using no visual aids or chalk, deliberately emulating a terrific undergraduate lecturer I had. It seemed to go over pretty well. But there’s no harm in having all kinds of chops.
July 20, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Maren
The tendency for students to become dictation machines is even worse when you couple Powerpoint presentations with educational environments where laptop notetaking is the norm. My worst grades in my first year of law school were in the two classes where the professor worked off a dense text outline, and it was all too easy to just keep typing down what was on the screen and never consciously process the information at all. Certain classes were enhanced by the teacher having tech presentation tools, like a class on internet law (no-brainer there), but for the most part we didn’t really need more than occasional concepts or case names to be written up on the board.
I will not even begin to discuss the lunacy of having wireless internet available in the classrooms. Suffice to say that if I’d gone to law school a few years earlier than I did, I might have paid slightly more attention.
July 20, 2009 at 12:39 pm
heydave
I find it hard to visualize either Zorba or Bjork (where’s my umlaut?) drinking sugary water that makes you burp.
Anyway, my use of PowerPoint sorts of stuff fills in the gaps when trying to convey the full idea. The visual impact one can muster often augments the hand waving. Plus, I always remember to break into another slide if I act like my boss and try to stuff words into any available free space.
July 20, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Chris McMahon
more Tufte, good stuff: PowerPoint Is Evil. Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html
July 20, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Charlieford
Righto, eric. If every chalk-board artist were incompetent, it would become un-humorous real fast.
And of course, beauty, grace, accuracy, all have their own attractions and can be pedagogically useful.
But I’ll wager watching someone draw a beautiful map free-hand is far more compelling than seeing one just as or even more beautiful thrown on a screen by the push of a button.
And I think that’s tied to the the neglected dimension of TEACHING AS PERFORMANCE. By that I do not mean it’s all about “fun” or “entertainment.” Rather, it’s the thrill of watching the risk, the high-wire act, to be more dramatic than it deserves perhaps. But when someone’s firing on all cylinders up there, it has an aesthetic and emotional dimension for the student that can really enhance learning.
It can also detract from it when the performance isn’t in the service of the subject, but takes center stage. But so also is that true of technology.
Let a thousand muskrats bloom, I say!
July 20, 2009 at 1:33 pm
serofriend
I’ve faced myriad difficulties using Powerpoint in the classroom. Many students interpret images in ways that deviate from my original intention. Of course, I’m there to facilitate comprehension, but students either don’t listen to me or focus all their energies on analyzing a given image. They then ask questions that seem outside the scope of the material, augmenting the confusion. In contrast, maps, statistics, landscapes, and built environments have all worked well for me during professional presentations.
Several institutions in my historical field and related disciplines offer seminars on images, pedagogy, and research. I attended one recently and will apply those teachings to undergraduate classes. Hopefully students will look at an image as a supportive tool rather than as yet another vilified obstacle on their way to an A.
July 20, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Vance
OT, but did you all see what happened to Skip Gates?
July 20, 2009 at 1:48 pm
eric
Just now, yes. I couldn’t find a way to make it postworthy, but maybe you can. It’s astonishing; he even got cuffed.
July 20, 2009 at 1:54 pm
eric
Well, I posted it. Maybe the comments will be better than the post.
July 20, 2009 at 2:32 pm
erubin
In physics, visuals and animations of some form are all but necessary. I gave a brief talk a few months ago on (*yawn*) “Using cross-correlation methods to determine crustal inhomogeneity”. I had worked for several weeks on, among other things, a short animation that would show the meat of the concept– a Google Maps view of the ground shaking while a simulated output of a seismometer wobbled up and down on the side. My bag of animation tools is pretty small, so I made the whole thing as an animated .gif in MATLAB. My presentation wasn’t nearly as technical as any of the others given that day, and it was by no means perfect, but it connected with people in the audience who had essentially no background in physics. Powerpoint and its cousins are awful if you misuse them (I’ve come across my fair share of people who literally read right off their slide), but they can also be a tremendous force of good in teaching.
Now I’m trying (albeit lazily) to learn Adobe Flash so that I can make more professional looking animations more quickly.
July 20, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Miriam
I can’t agree more with the results of this study. I will drop a class if I can if the instructor depends on Powerpoint. I have never taken a class that used it that wasn’t boring. Maybe there is nothing wrong with the technology and it is the instructors who choose to use it that are boring (present company excepted of course). Lectures need to be organic dialogues – even when there are 300 people in the room. By all means use video, use illustrations, use maps – just don’t present the material in bullet points.
July 20, 2009 at 5:27 pm
AaLD
My worst grades in my first year of law school were in the two classes where the professor worked off a dense text outline, and it was all too easy to just keep typing down what was on the screen and never consciously process the information at all.
If the purpose of the lesson is simply to transfer the lecture notes from the professor’s computer to the students’ computers, wouldn’t it be more efficient to simply email the notes and skip the class time? Or am I missing something here?
July 20, 2009 at 11:08 pm
saintneko
Chalk?
Has this guy been inside a college lately? I haven’t seen chalk in at least 5 years.
Nowdays, lectures are boring because the teachers are all getting high sniffing dry-erase marker. :D
July 21, 2009 at 5:46 am
dana
Depends on the institution. Some of us, if we wish to get high on our writing implements, have to grind the chalk into a fine powder first.
July 21, 2009 at 6:24 am
Will
Just to jump in on the Western Sahara, I expect there’s no data for it because it’s occupied by Morocco. It’s considered a separate country by the outside world, but I expect Coca-Cola just ships a bunch of bottles to Morocco without considering whether they end up in Western Sahara.
Since a lot of Moroccans consider Western Sahara part of Morocco, it’s unlikely that the distributor would keep a separate tally for Western Sahara. But I can tell you from personal experience that there definitely is some Coca-Cola consumption going on in Western Sahara :)
July 21, 2009 at 6:52 am
silbey
I still think we’re too easily conflating “boring” with “bad teaching.” Let me suggest some alternate theories that fit the facts. I have no idea if they’re true or not, but it is plausible.
A professor might have as their goal to be entertaining in class and, as a result, choose ways of teaching history that tend to be more easily entertaining, but less useful. I, for example, might teach about the Industrial Revolution in Britain by focusing on anecdotes about the Thames catching on fire and pea soup fogs killing people, to the exclusion of in-depth data that actually explores the progression of the I.R. in Britain. My students would be stimulated but would I be a better teacher? I don’t know.
Powerpoint–as Eric has noted–makes it easier to put up large amounts of data in a simple form, without having to freehand a world map on the chalk/white board. This might be allowing professors to get into such data and complexities in class in a way that they couldn’t previously with handouts and overhead projectors. But the result of that complexity would be that the classes would be denser and harder for students to engage with immediately. Again, ranked as more boring by the students, but not necessarily worse teaching.
We have two kinds of evidence at the moment:
1) student evaluations of the classes,
2) our own anecdotal experiences of horrendous powerpoint slides put on by someone.
No. 1 we should be skeptical of, just as we’re skeptical of student evaluations. (For example, is the superiority of discussion over lecture a reflection of a true superiority or a reflection of the fact that most discussion-led classes tend to come at the upper level, where the students are more committed to the subject matter, while lectures tend to come at the introductory level, with a fair number of non-majors?) No. 2 is problematic as well, for all the reasons anecdotal evidence is.
July 21, 2009 at 7:44 am
Robert Waldmann
Dear Dr Rauchway
I want those data. Can I get them if I subscribe to the economist ?
Why do I want those data ?
1) it is a strange fact that, given the income of the non rich, in countries where the rich are richer the infant mortality rate is higher.
2) One possible explanation is the distortion of consumption or lifestyles of the rich and famous hypothesis. The idea is that poor people imitate the consumption of the rich, blowing money that they could spend in a way which would save their children’s lives on things like coca cola.
This radical, sociological/behavioral, pinko, not hard core economics hypothesis is presented in, you guessed it, The Wealth of Nations.
I have been talking about using data on coca cola consumption in this research project for, get this, 20 years now (honest).
Can you give me any advice on where The Economist got the raw data ?
July 21, 2009 at 7:55 am
tilman
Does anybody know how to obtain the coca-cola raw data?
July 21, 2009 at 8:21 am
Western Dave
There are 3 elements to teaching: content, skills, pedagogy. If you don’t think about all three of them together, it is unlikely that you will ever be a good teacher. Or in other words, mediocre lecture plus power point = still a mediocre lecture. And since universities and most colleges don’t value teaching, there is lots of crappy teaching at the college and university level. None of these obvious truths tell us anything about the role of technology in the classroom except that places with bad teaching will continue to have bad teaching no matter what the delivery mechanisms are.
July 21, 2009 at 8:24 am
Charlieford
“. . . is the superiority of discussion over lecture a reflection of a true superiority . . . ?”
Yes, other things being equal–ie, assuming that in each case we are staying on topic, eg, which is among the hardest things to do at the introductory level.
Discussions are more democratic, they foster community, they engage more of the student’s capacities (ie, those for expression as well as reception), they give feedback to the professor right on the spot about how well the students understand the issues as well as what their real concerns are (which allows one to tune future lectures/discussions to engage those concerns), etc., etc.
That said, discussions are far, far riskier, and much more work to do really well, than a lecture, as the discussion is getting pulled in so many directions by students who are, by definition, not yet (or not fully) adept at the rules of the discipline (what counts as evidence, what’s relevant, what questions can be answered by the discipline and what can’t, etc.)
Steve Martin (in his memoir) has a great description of doing stand-up, and talks about how one has to be several steps ahead of yourself, plotting what’s coming next and adjusting timing, expression, movements, etc., all to create the desired affect, and it strikes me the same is true for teaching–you can’t be lost in the moment, but need to be thinking always about where you need to be going, how to get there, how to segue, how to connect with current events, where to offer a provocative judgment on the topic at hand that will move someone to question or object, etc.
All of that is hard enough when the only discourse you’re monitoring is your own. But when you’ve got a bunch of folk all going at it at once, it’s really, really difficult. I think that’s why so many people abdicate, opting for “just letting the discussion flow” which usually degenerates into irrelevance, or becoming “the guide on the side” and having them break up and learn peer-to-peer (which would be nice if anyone actually knew anything).
But a really good discussion, one that pulls in students with differing levels of preparation and reveals things to them about the topic, each other and themselves, is exhilarating and memorable.
The question is, is the relatively rare excellent discussion it worth all the discussions that go off the rails?
July 21, 2009 at 8:33 am
eric
Can you give me any advice on where The Economist got the raw data ?
I don’t know! I will see if I can find out.
July 21, 2009 at 8:35 am
eric
Steve Martin (in his memoir) has a great description of doing stand-up
A pointer to part of the Steve Martin memoir.
July 21, 2009 at 8:38 am
silbey
Yes, other things being equal
What is the evidence for that? Most of the pedagogical work I’ve looked at, makes the same two errors: reporting student evaluations uncritically and assuming that global retention (i.e. what *all* the students can remember) is the only reasonable goal.
July 21, 2009 at 8:43 am
Charlieford
“What is the evidence for that?”
What kind of evidence would count?
July 21, 2009 at 8:45 am
ben
one has to be several steps ahead of yourself
Quite.
July 21, 2009 at 8:47 am
eric
The Economist article lists its source for Coca-Cola consumption as … Coca-Cola. It’s here:
Economist; 12/20/97-01/02/98, Vol. 345 Issue 8048, p116, 2p, 4 graphs, 1 map, 2 color
July 21, 2009 at 9:02 am
Charlieford
And, so I’m not misunderstood, that’s neither a snarky nor a rhetorical question, silbey. I just don’t know. There’s just so many apple-and-oranges dynamics going on in comparing teachers, students, methods, etc.
Here’s a question I still haven’t resolved for myself: should I aim at the (say) 10% of students in the average lecture class who are bright and engaged and the most likely to become more adept at the discipline? Or is it in the end actually more important to reach the slackers in the back, and move them from being convinced the discipline is boring and irrelevant to conceding it can be interesting and it might be important? Or should I be aiming at the broad middle, knowing the best students will learn and profit no matter what I do, the worst will likely sink back to their default positions as soon as they’re out of the classroom orbit . . . ?
My confidence in the superiority of great discussions over great lectures is partially evidence driven (ie, studies that show how many minutes per hour students are actually paying attention, etc., etc.) partially anecdote driven (observing faces during lecture vs. during discussion), but mainly argument driven (ie, referring to something like “human nature.”)
July 21, 2009 at 9:02 am
kid bitzer
so i read the steve martin piece that eric’s pointer leads to. pretty cool.
“Son, you have an ob-leek sense of humor.”
that’s actually the most impressive saying i have ever heard attributed to elvis. more on the ball there than i’d thought.
yeah, steve martin has a lot to teach teachers. as does eddy izzard. good teaching can be like good stand-up. i can’t do either.
July 21, 2009 at 9:04 am
silbey
What kind of evidence would count?
Something that doesn’t fall prey to the concerns I listed above.
Here’s a question I still haven’t resolved for myself: should I aim at the (say) 10% of students in the average lecture class who are bright and engaged and the most likely to become more adept at the discipline? Or is it in the end actually more important to reach the slackers in the back, and move them from being convinced the discipline is boring and irrelevant to conceding it can be interesting and it might be important? Or should I be aiming at the broad middle, knowing the best students will learn and profit no matter what I do, the worst will likely sink back to their default positions as soon as they’re out of the classroom orbit . . . ?
Yeah, that’s a really critical concern. In my intro classes, I have much the same mix, and deciding on who to aim for is going radically to alter how I teach. Discussions, for example, have a tendency (if not really really carefully moderated) to end up with the same people contributing all the time. I can ameliorate that and pull other people in, but that risks shutting down folks who want to contribute a lot.
My confidence in the superiority of great discussions over great lectures is partially evidence driven (ie, studies that show how many minutes per hour students are actually paying attention, etc., etc.) partially anecdote driven (observing faces during lecture vs. during discussion), but mainly argument driven (ie, referring to something like “human nature.”)
I think my skepticism is driven by a combination of the same things. The evidence I’ve seen has been problematic in a lot of ways, some of which I outlined above. On the anecdotal side, it’s been mixed also: bored faces in lecture are equalled by frozen faces in discussion. And I’m always a bit wary of “human nature” arguments because a lot of them turn out to be confirming biases.
I’m struck also by the way in which the study privileged the feeling of the students being bored, but dismissed the feeling of the students that they *wanted* lectures. The former is presented as conclusive evidence, while the latter is presented as (essentially) “Oh those silly undergraduates.”
July 21, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Charlieford
I don’t lean too hard on fixed notions of human nature–just simple stuff like: thinking is better than not thinking, when folks have thoughts they think are good they like to share them, sitting like an inert lump for an hour can sometimes become tedious, etc.
And, I say all this as someone who has a reputation for being a big lecturer (Student evaluation: “He’s the most boring professor ever . . . all he does is talk and talk and talk, and he never shows us a video.” Professor evaluator: “He is single-handedly rescuing, redeeming, and reinvigorating what I feared was disappearing from our campus–the academic lecture–and he proves it remains a viable, valuable teaching tool in the 21st century.”) So my defense of the discussion is like a guy who lives in NJ, dreaming of the Tahitian Islands (or eric’s backyard).
My final argument (from human nature): The best discussion is more enjoyable for all concerned than the best lecture (unless the lecturer is Stanley Fish, or Hitler . . .)
July 21, 2009 at 12:53 pm
kid bitzer
godwin!
July 25, 2009 at 4:45 pm
serial catowner
This all reminds me of the worst lecturer I had in college. It was funny to watch- all the students would start out, every session, taking notes, and then the pencils would fall idle- because the lecturer was a flake, and you couldn’t make heads nor tails of what she said. The upside being, you could just sit and watch the fun, because there was no way you could possibly be tested on what she said.
That said, I find a world map of Coca-Cola consumption to be singularly unpersuasive as to the merits of visual aids in stimulating discussion.
July 25, 2009 at 10:26 pm
Ron Tunning
Startling, but true, Mexicans and Chileans consume more Coca-Cola per capita than U.S. residents. This according to the Coca-Cola Company’s 2008 figures which can be read at http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/ourcompany/ar/pdf/perCapitaConsumption2008.pdf
Also, what’s up with the Germans and Greeks? Their per capita consumption of Coca-Cola declined between 1998 and 2008.