Baskerville Is the Greatest Font, Statistically, Says Filmmaker Errol Morris

An anonymous reader writes "A survey of unsuspecting New York Times readers implicitly answered the question: Does a certain font make you agree or disagree more often than another font? It turns out Baskerville confers a 1.5% advantage towards agreement on a survey question, compared to an average of six fonts. They were asked to agree or disagree to a passage from physicist David Deutsch's book The Beginning of Infinity, and were found to have an optimistic, if Baskerville-favoring, outlook on life. David Dunning, a psychologist awarded a Nobel prize and, separately, an IgNobel prize (for the eponymous Dunning-Kruger Effect), called Baskerville 'the king of fonts.' Sadly, Comic Sans — notable for its appearance in the Higgs Boson announcement — seems to be the weakest font. And why did Lisa Randall, the Harvard physicist responsible for that Higgs announcement use Comic Sans? According to the article, 'Because I like it.'"

Comments

watch the "Helvtica" documentary...

[acidfast7]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkoX0pEwSCw

Compensatory depletion

[K. S. Kyosuke]

And why did Lisa Randall, the Harvard physicist responsible for that Higgs announcement use Comic Sans? According to the article, 'Because I like it.'"

Given the mostly fixed number of neurons available to any single individual, the talent for physics must have come from somewhere... obviously, the aesthetics circuits got the short end of the deal.

Re:Compensatory depletion

[Anonymous Coward]

Feynman being, of course, being an outlier.

Very interesting.

[mcmonkey]

Time to update my resume.

Re:OMG Flamebait

[jandrese]

Comic Sans is utterly despised by anybody who cares about fonts, but for everybody else it's just another option that they can choose if they feel like it. Lisa Randall is in the latter group, she's too busy discovering the secrets of the universe to care what font would win her the most esteem among people who give a shit about fonts.