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

Posted by timothy on from the your-brain-is-vulnerable dept.

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.'"

7 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. Links by clinko · · Score: 5, Informative

    Baskerville: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baskerville

    Open Baskerville: http://klepas.org/openbaskerville/

  2. I read the article... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    and Lisa Randall was not the responsible for the announcement.

    Lisa Randall, a Harvard physicist, kindly e-mailed Fabiola Gianotti on my behalf. Gianotti, the coordinator of the CERN program to find the Higgs boson, provided a compelling rationale for why she had used Comic Sans. When asked, she said, “Because I like it.”

    Lisa *asked* the responsible.

    Oh editors, I miss the times where at least you read the submitted articles. Now the anonymous guy can write whatever he wants in the summary and you'll publish it.

  3. Mistake in the summary by fondacio · · Score: 5, Informative

    The summary misstates the person responsible for using Comic Sans in the Higgs boson announcement. The full quote:

    Lisa Randall, a Harvard physicist, kindly e-mailed Fabiola Gianotti on my behalf. Gianotti, the coordinator of the CERN program to find the Higgs boson, provided a compelling rationale for why she had used Comic Sans. When asked, she said, “Because I like it.”

    I was already wondering why a Harvard physicist would be making the announcement of a discovery by CERN.

  4. Dunning doesn't have a Nobel Prize by JoshuaZ · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm really fond of the Dunning-Kruger effect to the point where I mention it almost daily and people get annoyed with me. So I was really surprised to hear the claim in summary that Dunning had a Nobel. What would it be in? The last time a psychologist got a Nobel it was for work related to economics. Sure, enough 10 seconds of fact checking, verified that he's not on any list of Nobel Laureates, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates or the official lists at Nobelprize.org. The claim about Dunning getting a Nobel isn't in TFA so I'm not sure where it came from.

    1. Re:Dunning doesn't have a Nobel Prize by badfish99 · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'm really fond of the Dunning-Kruger effect to the point where I mention it almost daily

      So: would you say that you have an expert level of skill and knowledge on this particular topic?

  5. Testing... by jones_supa · · Score: 5, Funny

    You should send 10M€ to my bank account.

  6. Re:Compensatory depletion by Young+Master+Ploppy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I find Comic Sans very hard to read. Times New Roman too. Can't understand how these fonts can be allowed to exist!

    I actually asked an OFSTED inspector why Comic Sans is always used in schools and nurseries - she said that it's one of the only commonly-available fonts that draws the lowercase letter "a" in the same way they teach children to draw it (no stalk on top)

    --
    http://instantbadger.blogspot.com