MurdocJensen said:
I'm curious. Are there any science or math majors who found themselves needing to improve on communication with other majors and professors in a similar field? Was a mastery of the subject the most important thing in this communication, or was it more so just speaking more with others?
Yes I am one who needed to do that. I currently go to Toastmasters and I keep going because I continually learn about communicating to other people (body language, speech, the whole kit and kaboodle).
I don't think many people realize it, but a lot of technical people have to tell other non-technical people in ways that they can understand and in as little time as possible, their recommendations or results that these other people can use to make decisions.
To answer your question, both are important. If you can't communicate effectively, then people won't be able to use your work/labor and you'll probably be sacked. If you don't have the technical know-how, then again other people will have no use for you and you probably won't be hired to begin with.
If you do it enough times (as in presenting things to non-technical people), you'll get the hang of it.
The key thing is to remember who your audience is and tailor everything to them. Writing an academic paper requires something different than giving a report to manager with no little technical training. Doing a talk to the public to raise public awareness for what you work is again requires a different approach.
The more experience you get at doing this kind of thing with different audiences, the better you will become and you'll get a feel for how you should approach things.
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