Baskerville Is the Greatest Font, Statistically, Says Filmmaker Errol Morris 158
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.'"
watch the "Helvtica" documentary... (Score:5, Insightful)
Compensatory depletion (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Very interesting. (Score:5, Insightful)
Time to update my resume.
Re:Compensatory depletion (Score:2, Insightful)
Feynman being, of course, being an outlier.
Re:OMG Flamebait (Score:5, Insightful)