What can I do to be able to understand conference presentations? (I wish to remain anonymous, so I've omitted many details here. If those
details make this question unanswerable, please don't hesitate to vote it
down or close it.)

I've been a PhD student in mathematics for about two years. Whenever I am at a
conference, summer school, or a small seminar talk in our university, I
usually don't understand anything about the talk after the first two minutes.
Sometimes the speaker goes quickly through some basic concepts about group
theory, finite fields, or similar, that I'm able to follow because I know the
stuff already. But when the new stuff starts, most of the time I get so lost
that I can't even answer the simple question "What was the talk about?" when
my friends ask. So I just sit there with an open notebook, and after the
first few minutes of each talk, I start scribbling some unrelated things to
kill time before the next talk. If I see an interesting formula or similar on
the slides, even if I don't know what the speaker is talking about, I
sometimes try to see if I can figure out what that formula means, just because
simple mathematics is still fun - what I do still does not help me understand
the topic of the talk.

The problem might be partly about being able to focus, but I guess it's mostly
about the actual scientific content. When taking courses as an undergrad, I
never had problems of this magnitude while attending lectures because I had
time and material for studying the topic before and after the lectures,
and the lecturers had a decent estimate of what the students know before the
lecture.

Do you have similar experience? Is there something I can do to actually
benefit from listening to conference presentations? I hope this is not the
impostor syndrome - if everyone in the audience feels like this, conferences
are horrible waste of money, time, and natural resources.

I came up with a few ideas but they don't seem practical.


"You're not really supposed to understand anything as a PhD student.
Just sit there and wait for a familiar term, theorem, concept, whatever to
appear. Conference by conference, talk by talk, you'll probably encounter more and
familiar stuff, and before you know it, you don't have this problem any
more." If I had to decide, I'd never fund a learning process this slow. Or probably it is much quicker than I can imagine.
"Go to conferences with topics closer to your research." Well, they don't exist, unless I organize a conference about my research. And the point of going to conferences is to learn about things in your field that are not exactly your research (of course in addition to telling others about your research).
"When the conference schedule is published, pick one interesting
presentation title for each day and try to learn something about that topic before
conference." It might take a few days of focused study for each talk, so some weeks before the conference. I guess that time would be better used doing research.
It's not your fault if you don't understand a talk

Unfortunately, many speakers at scientific conferences do a poor job. Most speakers I've seen talk more for themselves than for an actual audience. Unwittingly, they focus more on exhibiting knowledge than on being actually helpful towards the people sitting in front of them.

This mostly happens because people don't know. They see bad examples, which they assume must be good because everybody does it and just do what other people do.

So if you did not understand, don't blame yourself. It's the speaker's job to make you understand something. It's quite a paradox that many speakers thank the audience for their attention (!) after a talk—as if the audience did them a favor by paying attention. Instead, good speakers should be thanked by the audience, because they made things understandable.

Become a better presenter yourself

What I recommend to understand other's presentations better is to start giving better presentations yourself. Effective scientific communication cannot be explained in a simple post, but here are some basic principles:


Before starting to introduce yourself or reading the title of your talk (which is unnecessary anyway), draw the audience's attention. Explain to them in a way they can relate to why your problem domain is relevant.
Then, explain the problem you are addressing (and why it is a problem).
Next, immediately state your conclusion. Don't make your presentation a cliffhanger. Tell people the main point upfront; this helps them (decide to) focus on the remainder of the presentation.
Continue with a preview of your main points that support the conclusion. This is a mental map for the rest of your talk.
Elaborate on your points as necessary.
Close the story by putting your points and the conclusion into perspective.


Many speakers fail to do one of the points above; especially postponing the conclusion towards the end is a common mistake that makes it hard for the audience to follow.

Why should you do this with your own talks?


You become part of the solution. Other PhD students will now finally see a presentation they understand.
You will inspire people to give better talks, which you will understand more easily.
Doing the exercise for your own material, will eventually help you do it for others. If you see a poorly structured presentation, you will mentally start rearranging it into a better talk—helping you finally understand what others do more clearly.


Why is the above presentation structure relevant?

By stating the conclusion first, you give people a mental map. If they get lost during elaboration (like you often do), it's not a disaster: they know the most important thing already. Furthermore, the preview will help them get back on track if they get lost during one of the subpoints.