The customer account statements for Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities were notoriously old fashioned computer printouts. [1][2] There was some coverage with a former client, I can't find now, where he even talked about the appearance of the statements encouraging trust.
I wonder if Bernie Madoff researched it, or if it just came with a con man's intuition.
[1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/madoff/financial/
[2] http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/a-look-at-madoffs-tra...
Re:Can a Font Make Us Believe Something Is True?
by chimeracoder on Sunday May 24, 2015 @05:21PM
(#9597669)
> One person's reaction has stuck with me to this day: "If it weren't true, the computer would have rejected it!"
Must have been a Prolog programmer!
Re:Can a Font Make Us Believe Something Is True?
by kristopolous on Sunday May 24, 2015 @05:09PM
(#9597619)
over 70 years of age or over 70 sample size?
Age. N was about 20.
Re:Can a Font Make Us Believe Something Is True?
by CodeWriter23 on Sunday May 24, 2015 @05:26PM
(#9597684)
I'm gonna go with age because of the qualifier "in a care home"
Re:Can a Font Make Us Believe Something Is True?
by smorrow on Monday May 25, 2015 @04:32AM
(#9599147)
Maybe his thought process was that giving the age twice ("elderly" and then "70" -- do you need both?) would be redundant, so that the redundant number might not be an age.
Re:Can a Font Make Us Believe Something Is True?
by kristopolous on Monday May 25, 2015 @08:02PM
(#9602255)
Indeed. I also consider 70 to be pretty young for a retirement home. Statistically speaking, I assume the vast majority of 70 year olds (95+%) are living independently. So I thought either OP is being redundant and low-balling or giving a sample size. Didn't know.
Btw, through a quick web-search, it appears the average for new residents is mid-80s.
I showed true and made-up (NPR Wait Wait style) articles to elderly people (over 70, in a care home), printed in one of 3 formats - on newsprint in the font the NY Times uses, on glossy paper in a somewhat 'friendly' font (like comic sans, but less so), and finally in dot matrix, on green-and-white fanfold, all upper case.
There were remarkably few differences in the first two, for either true or false stories, but NEARLY EVERYONE (like, > 85%) rated the computer fanfold printed stories as being true.
One person's reaction has stuck with me to this day: "If it weren't true, the computer would have rejected it!"