John Allen Paulos:

In listening to stories we tend to suspend disbelief in order to be entertained, whereas in evaluating statistics we generally have an opposite inclination to suspend belief in order not to be beguiled.

Cordelia Hebblethwaite:

One group was given the lists in 16-point Arial pure black font, which is generally regarded to be easy and clear to read.

The other had the same information presented in either 12-point Comic Sans MS 75% greyscale font or 12-point Bodoni MT 75% greyscale.

The volunteers were distracted for 15 minutes, and then tested on how much they could remember.

Researchers found that, on average, those given the harder-to-read fonts actually recalled 14% more.

Anthony York:

Jenny Oropeza, who died after a long illness last month, was reelected to another term in the state Senate on Tuesday. With more than half of the vote counted, voters in Oropeza's Long Beach district gave her more than 54% percent of the vote. Republican John Stammreich trailed with 40% of the vote.

Kira Cochrane:

Last year, a poll for tissue manufacturer SCA found that 41% of British men and 33% of women don't shower every day, with 12% of people only having a proper wash once or twice a week.

John Krainer and Stephen LeRoy:

House prices have fallen approximately 30% from their peak in 2006, accompanied by a level of defaults and foreclosures without precedent in the post-World War II era. Many homeowners have mortgages with principal amounts higher than the market value of their properties. In general, though, the rational default point is below the "underwater" point where house price equals the remaining loan balance, and depends on prospects for future house price appreciation and borrower default costs.

Eric Dash and Nelson D. Schwartz:

About 11.5 percent of borrowers are in default today, up from 5.7 percent from two years earlier.

CoreLogic, at the end of Q2 2010:

23 percent of all residential properties with mortgages were in negative equity.

Sara Murray:

Washington, D.C. had the largest share of residents receiving food stamps: More than a fifth, 21.1%, of its residents collected assistance in August. Washington was followed by Mississippi, where 20.1% of residents received food stamps, and Tennessee, where 20% tapped into the government nutrition program.