Stats Made Easy » Graphics http://www.statsmadeeasy.net A wry look at all things statistical and/or scientific with an engineering perspective. Tue, 11 Jun 2013 22:48:54 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 It’s the letter of the law: Stand down with Calibri http://www.statsmadeeasy.net/2012/08/its-the-letter-of-the-law-stand-down-with-calibri/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=its-the-letter-of-the-law-stand-down-with-calibri http://www.statsmadeeasy.net/2012/08/its-the-letter-of-the-law-stand-down-with-calibri/#comments Fri, 17 Aug 2012 20:12:29 +0000 mark http://www.statsmadeeasy.net/?p=1231 Twenty years ago or so I cajoled the advertising rep from R&D Magazine into lending me a binder filled with several inches of ‘white papers’ of the publisher’s research on readership.  Their data came primarily from A/B (split) testing—not very sophisticated but effective for simple comparisons.  One question I resolved was whether to use serif or sans serif font.  The research showed significant advantages to headlines being san serif, such as Arial font, and text in serif—for example, Times New Roman.  I’ve stuck with that ever since,* except for the fonts themselves changing over to Calibri and Cambria—the defaults in current versions of Microsoft Office software.

However, now I am set back by this news from Wall Street Journal that Calibri comes up short—30 percent to be precise—versus Arial and other common fonts, at least so far as the State of Michigan is concerned.  The inventor of Calibri, Lucas de Groot, justifies his type being smaller because of its high readability per square inch.  Although this seems plausible to me, I would like to see the research supporting this assertion.

For an interesting detailing of fonts—serif versus san serif and neo-grotesque versus humanist—see this blog by Laurie Israel Think.

*For writings that will likely be read in printed form, that is.  Having seen research like this recent study from the JOURNAL OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, I believe that words written in a sans serif font provide a significant advantage for messages read on computer screens, such as blogs and email.  Thus for these purposes I prefer using Calibri exclusively—ditto for presentations projected on screen, for example—using Powerpoint.

]]> http://www.statsmadeeasy.net/2012/08/its-the-letter-of-the-law-stand-down-with-calibri/feed/ 0 Bubbly graphs make statistics delightful http://www.statsmadeeasy.net/2011/03/bubbly-graphs-make-statistics-delightful/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=bubbly-graphs-make-statistics-delightful http://www.statsmadeeasy.net/2011/03/bubbly-graphs-make-statistics-delightful/#comments Mon, 14 Mar 2011 00:53:19 +0000 mark http://www.statsmadeeasy.net/?p=801 Check out this link* to an interview by Fareed Zakaria of “gap minder” Hans Rosling.  This Swedish statistician, with a focus on global health, uses dynamic bubble graphs to dramatize world developments that are closing the gap to USA’s lead in well-being.

It really is mesmerizing to see Rosling dramatize statistics via his moving graphs.  See his recent hour-long BBC special “The Joy of Stats” at this GapMinder website. You will find it very entertaining and enlightening, I am sure.

“I kid you not – statistics is now the sexiest subject around.”

-          Hans Rosling

Fortunately for all of us, Google bought the technology for these motion charts to make them widely available.  For example, fiddle with the graph correlating life expectancy and fertility at this Google Labs’ Public Data Explorer posting.

Who would have ever thought that statistics could be so much fun!

*Thanks to Paul Sheldon, an independent consultant specializing in quality and productivity tools,  who provided me the heads-up.

 

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