Creating presentation slides with incrementally displayed graphs

Some explanation of the title of this recipe is in order. In ancient times, we gave presentations by putting sheets of plastic on "overhead projectors". We tended to put a great deal of information on each slide, as it was cumbersome to change them. Now that we plug computers into projectors and effortlessly flip back and forth through our slides, it is easier on the eyes to keep each slide relatively uncluttered and focused on a single idea.

One technique that aids this style of presentation is to create a kind of animation by having a series of slides where most of the content remains the same while one or two elements vary, focusing attention on the information conveyed by the changing elements. It gives the impression of an animation because the changing pieces can appear to move relative to the static content if the slides are changed quickly. This type of presentation is easy to create with gnuplot and the LaTeX beamer...