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)
Re:watch the "Helvtica" documentary... (Score:4, Interesting)
I recommend the whole "design triology" ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Trilogy [wikipedia.org]
And for those with more time, to read the 3-volume set "Design Classics 001-999" ... http://uk.phaidon.com/store/design/phaidon-design-classics-9780714843995/ [phaidon.com]
Links (Score:5, Informative)
Baskerville: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baskerville [wikipedia.org]
Open Baskerville: http://klepas.org/openbaskerville/ [klepas.org]
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.
Re:Compensatory depletion (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, and lest you think I'm a-hatin', most of the above applies to me as well.
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Feynman being, of course, being an outlier.
Re:Compensatory depletion (Score:5, Funny)
Having met Lisa Randall at a conference down under I can say fortunately she not only showered that day but also looked quite hot. Mind you this was several years ago and I was single so admittedly so did Margaret Thatcher
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...but also looked quite hot... ...and I was single so admittedly so did Margaret Thatcher
Seek counselling. [wikipedia.org]
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Not exactly "hot" generally but a decent looking woman and for a professor of physics we could give her hot in that realm.
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http://mattnager.photoshelter.com/image/I0000K_JoVscAlwc [photoshelter.com]
A lady physics prof who looks like that at 50? Hotness indeed.
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That's what's known in the physics lingo as "physics hot."
Standards are all relative, and like good physicists, we are aware of our biases and quantify them.
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"literally fall apart"? Choose an option:
1. I do not think that word means what you think it means
Actually, if he happens to refer to postmortem decomposition, he's most certainly right about the "doing a lot better" part.
2. [citation needed]. That would be an awesome YouTube video!
Of course. Here you are. [youtube.com]
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The Geek Heirarchy (Score:4)
No, not that one [brunching.com]. Or this one [xkcd.com].
When I started at a NASA center, working with a bunch of physicists for the most part, I found I was being sent to an AAS (American Astronomical Society) meeting. I don't remember exactly what my boss said that was disparaging about astronomers, but I do remember he said something to the effect, 'but at least they're not mathmeticians, as they generally bathe at least once a week'.
So, just remember -- they might've been cleaning themselves out of the sink -- but at least they were cleaning themselves.
(and well, during undergrad, I think I had a period of about 10-14 days when I don't think I went above ground ... at least not when the sun was out (and it was summer) ... the problem is, you can't tell just how ripe you've managed to get ... so engineers aren't always the best group, either).
Re:Compensatory depletion (Score:4, Funny)
I majored in physics in college, and spent a lot of time with physicists from world renowned Nobel prize winners to lowly undergraduates. I can testify that physicists, in addition to lacking any appreciation for visual aesthetics, also lack the ability to properly dress themselves, shave their faces, comb their hair, speak to an audience not of their peers, and most of all they have no understanding of proper hygiene. We used to have a lounge out of which at least half a dozen kids were living, toothbrushes and all. The stench still haunts me. I remember walking into the lavatory where 3-4 physics majors were taking a shower out of a sink. Oh, and lest you think I'm a-hatin', most of the above applies to me as well.
this is how I learn I'm a physics genius?
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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.
Or perhaps it is a rather clever method of weeding out people who look beyond the aesthetics towards the actual content (i.e. people who are actually capable of understanding the presentation in the first place) from those who are unable to distinguish appearance from content and thus are unlikely to contribute much of anything of note towards the scientific discussion. Probably not, but maybe.
Re:Compensatory depletion (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Compensatory depletion (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)
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I find Comic Sans very hard to read. Times New Roman too. Can't understand how these fonts can be allowed to exist!
Times New Roman is like the polar opposite of Comic Sans and probably the easiest on the eyes/quickest to read. Have you read a paperback recently?
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Have you read a paperback recently?
The rules for readability are dependent on medium and resolution. Serifs behave differently with transmissive and reflective displays, for instance.
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More importantly, it doesn't use a whole lot of ink.
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Now, serifed fonts, generally speaking, are not as easy on the eye to me, and some can even get distracting when they
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I find Comic Sans very hard to read.
I got a typeface designed for the visually impaired, so I could do things like read /. without my glasses, with the font size cranked way up (the sidebars disappear into give-up-and-use-tables land, but the body and comments are fine).
It's remarkably similar to Comic Sans.
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obviously, the aesthetics circuits got the short end of the deal
I take it you've never seen Ms. Randall. Her wonderful ability for writing and teaching aren't her only assets.
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> I hear that response (or, "I hate it") [...] Personally, when it comes to that line of reasoning, I hate it
heh. i see what you did there.
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I read the article... (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.
Re:I read the article... (Score:5, Funny)
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Funny - I noticed the same mistake (and posted it before I noticed that you did). And then I thought of the same joke, but didn't bother to make it.
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1.5% from a survey? (Score:3)
Where are the error bars?
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A statistic where they measured out of 6 fonts which one made you *agree* to something the most.
==> Article Title: "The Greatest Font"
Re:1.5% from a survey? (Score:5, Informative)
They don't seem to represent the sampling uncertainty graphically as error bars, but if you scroll down to the paragraph that starts with "Are the results the product of chance?", they do a basic statistical analysis, and find that Baskerville performs better than average with p < 0.01 (and still p < 0.05, if you do a Bonferroni correction).
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There are actually fifteen pairwise comparisons possible (A-B, A-C, A-D, A-E, A-F; B-C, B-D, B-E, B-F; C-D, C-E, C-F; D-E, D-F; E-F). Using the - admittedly conservative - Bonferroni correction, the result is no longer significant.
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I believe they're testing each font's performance against the average performance, rather than looking for pairwise differences between a specific pair of fonts.
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On 7500 sample you are looking at a std dev of around 0.5% ... so error bars (at 95% confidence) would be VERY ROUGHLY plus/minus 1%
Obligatory... (Score:2)
Achewood:
http://achewood.com/index.php?date=07052007 [achewood.com]
--
BMO
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Comic sans is likely the most divisive font (Score:2)
Re:Comic sans is likely the most divisive font (Score:5, Funny)
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Damnit! I knew Congress shouldn't have written the Affordable Care Act in Comic Sans!
Fixed that for 'ya. I know you're trying to be funny, but you can be factual at the same time.
Further studies? (Score:2)
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Mistake in the summary (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.
Re:Mistake in the summary (Score:4, Informative)
CERN is in Europe, but almost any high-energy physicist worth a damn has rotated through there or one of the previous colliders. High energy physics is necessarily international, due to the costs and politics involved.
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The larger science experiments all have collaborations with universities and groups around the world.
Very interesting. (Score:5, Insightful)
Time to update my resume.
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Take your resume lessons from this [businessinsider.com] guy.
Read bottom up.
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Thanks for the link. It fits in perfectly with the book I am attempting to write.
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Note that Carl's signature is in color.
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Is the problem that your resume isn't in Baskerville or that it is in Comic Sans?
Sadly, those may not be mutually exclusive options.
Computer modern (Score:3)
This is probably a result of an occupational hazard, but I know very well that I pay more attention to text typeset in Computer Modern. Even though it is the default font in LaTeX, to that what Times New Roman is to Word.
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I recall reading somewhere that Knuth considered his computer modern typeface to be "ugly", but yet I find that cmr is quite consistently a favorite among people who work with scientific or technical documents.
Was Knuth being needlessly modest, or did the industry that was most likely to be using software like TeX simply get so accustomed to seeing it that it started to look attractive to them?
Re:Computer modern (Score:4, Informative)
The reason for Computer Modern's ugliness isn't apparent until you know what it's imitating. This [imgur.com] is a comparison of CM and Bodoni 12, a font from the early 19th century. So-called "Modern" typefaces were frequently used for setting professional and mathematical treatises (and Slashdot's had an article in the past about how being difficult to read slows down the reader and gives them time to absorb the material.)
Essentially, the problem with CM is that it has straight flat parts on the sides of curves (e.g. the bowls of d and b), which make the font feel synthetic, like Chicago [identifont.com]. The rigidity of the figures makes the letters feel as though they were assembled out of parts (which they were), rather than organically drawn.
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Bush v Gore (Score:2, Funny)
So, basically, world history might have taken a different turn if Al Gore's campaign had used Baskerville. And wouldn't Comic Sans have been the perfect match for 43? Ah, democracy, lead us onwards.
Dunning doesn't have a Nobel Prize (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dunning doesn't have a Nobel Prize (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?
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He won an Ig-Nobel prize, but not a Nobel AFAIK. It mentions neither in TFA.
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He won an Ig-Nobel prize, but not a Nobel AFAIK. It mentions neither in TFA.
Indeed, he won the Ig Nobel together with Kruger in 2000 [improbable.com], but the Ig Nobels are clearly different from the Nobel prizes [improbable.com]:
The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology.
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Testing... (Score:5, Funny)
Its really depressing (Score:2)
Baskerville Is the Greatest Font... out of the six (Score:2)
compared to an average of six fonts
Err, what? I think it was compared to exactly five other fonts.
Courier 10 Pitch (Score:2)
Helvetica FTW (Score:5, Funny)
Cultural Differences ? (Score:3)
I'm a french guy, and I never saw the Baskerville font used in France.
I'm pretty sure that this font has a cultural connotation for english people, but not for the rest of the world.
When one reads a text in Baskerville, one probably unconsciously associates it with ancient books, and with ancient wisdom.
An interesting experience would be to write a "modern" question (using recent words) with Baskerville, and measure its impact.
Garamond (Score:5, Interesting)
In the Typography course I took, we were taught that the greatest font of all time is Garamond [wikipedia.org].
It wasn't even tested in this article.
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I guess that's why Wikipedia uses it on their logo.
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In the Typography course I took, we were taught that the greatest font of all time is Garamond [wikipedia.org].
It wasn't even tested in this article.
If your typography course claimed any font was the greatest font of all time, you've probably wasted your money. There is no "greatest" font. There are many fonts, of varying quality, some suited for some purposes better than others. And "Garamond" isn't even one font. There are many fonts sold by many vendors with the name Garamond, some more closely resembling the designs of Claude Garamond himself than others. That said, Adobe Garamond, one of the most popular Garamonds today is a very handsome font
Ah, one of the classic blunders (Score:2)
Determining there is a difference between two things because one is significantly different than a reference and the other is not.
He also doesn't say what was compared. And the result is pretty marginal. Interesting, but definitely not the law of nature he implies.
What if the reader didn't have that font? (Score:2)
Passage (Score:2)
They responded to a passage from asked to agree or disagree to a passage
Good thing the editors were not involved in this study. They would have had to read the passage... and then respond to a passage from asked to agree or disagree to a passage.
I mean, honestly.
Summary is wrong (Score:2)
Segoe UI (Score:2)
I disagree (Score:2)
the summary is written in another font, so i must disagree.
Ok, because of that and that the choosing on the font probably is influenced by other things, popular enough (don't know, i.e. old prints of the bible or old style scientific papers) written in that font or similar enough ones in key aspects that rigs our judgement.
What if you can change a font in a book? (Score:2)
When I bought Kindle one of the things I wondered is why does this thing allow me change the font? Isn't it supposed to be the part of the book composition?
Dunno if it helps or hurts in non-fiction books, but IMO it really helps the author to convey the mood in fiction literature.
Those Statistics Seem Suspect (Score:2)
FTA -- "Are the results the product of chance? To address this question, Dunning calculated the p-value for each font. Grossly simplified, the p-value is an assessment of the likelihood that the particular effect we are looking at (e.g., the effect produced by Baskerville) is a result of a meaningless coincidence. [10] The p-value for Baskerville is 0.0068 [snip explanation of P-values]... The conservative approach is to divide 5 percent by the number of tests. Thus, the p-value to dismiss chance falls to 0
Gentium (Score:2)
I'm no fontographer, but I really like Gentium, and have for many years. It's capitals are not as tall as the ascenders, and the bow of h and n give a distinctive flavor to the text. With Gentium the two letters r and n run together (rn) look nothing like the letter m, but with Baskerville it is difficult to distinguish them.
Any other takers for Gentium?
People are shallow (Score:2)
This study just corroborates what I already knew. People are shallow. Especially all you Comic Sans haters. I think half the Comic Sans hatred is just because it has become trendy to hate Comic Sans.
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This study just corroborates what I already knew. People are shallow. Especially all you Comic Sans haters. I think half the Comic Sans hatred is just because it has become trendy to hate Comic Sans.
I think Comic Sans hatred comes from having to read things in Comic Sans.
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This study just corroborates what I already knew. People are shallow. Especially all you Comic Sans haters. I think half the Comic Sans hatred is just because it has become trendy to hate Comic Sans.
First World Problems. Slashdot is full of articles about them lately, and people who like to bitch and moan about them.
Anyone who flies into a rage at seeing a font they don't like has to step back from the screen and get out of the basement/cave for a while...a looong while. Get out and volunteer to be a Big Brother or something, seriously.
btw, if I could've, I would've written this entire post in Comic Sans, for all the fans out there :P
Good choice (Score:2)
Re:OMG Flamebait - Flame on! (Score:5, Interesting)
Dyslexia [dyslexic.com]
While not the best, it's decent and by far the most widely available (of the fonts dyslexics find easier to read).
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An odd trend I noticed while going through the public school system is that every science teacher I ever had used Comic Sans--including two professors in college. The plural of anecdote is not data, but somehow I'm not surprised that Lisa Randall, a physicist, likes Comic Sans.
Re:OMG Flamebait (Score:5, Insightful)
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More readable? yes. Agreeable? Apparently not. Save Calibri and Arial for the technical manual but make sure your marketing literature is covered in Baskerville. Maybe since the text is not quite as readable perhaps it slows the reader down to a point where the text seems to be visually "spoken" at a slower pace. People who talk intelligently but at a slightly slower pace tend to draw in their audience and they don't come across as suspicious fast-talkers. Maybe that's the effect that Baskerville is h
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Save Calibri and Arial for the technical manual but make sure your marketing literature is covered in Baskerville.
Calibri and Arial are sans-serif fonts. Isn't it generally accepted that ordinary paragraph text on paper is much less readable in sans-serif?
For screen reading I prefer something like Arial, but I also prefer to make that choice myself. I.e. use something like HTML and let the user decide the default font.
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It's a testament to the power of marketing that anyone thinks that Miller is "extremely drinkable".
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It's a testament to the power of marketing that anyone thinks that Miller is "extremely drinkable".
It's the champagne of beer. Delicious.
Seriously, nothing is more annoying than having some beer snob try to tell me I'm not fully enjoying my drink because I spent a fraction of what they spent on their own. I'm actually pretty picky when it comes to my beer, and I've tried all sorts throughout the years, and High Life is in my top five.
A testament to the power of their marketing is the High Life hat I'm wearing. Yeah, I'm white trash like that.
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You can with a little HTML. Haven't you seen those annoying posts people make using monospaced fonts? I think they do it so everyone knows they code or something.
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