Ian Spence (born 1944) is a Scottish-Canadian

psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and explanation, interpretatio ...

, and Emeritus Professor in the Department of Psychology at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

, known for his work on graphical perception, psychometric methods and the history of statistical graphics, specifically on the life and work of

William Playfair William Playfair (22 September 1759 – 11 February 1823) was a Scottish engineer and political economist. The founder of graphical methods of statistics, Playfair invented several types of diagrams: in 1786 he introduced the line, area and ...

.Crampton, Jeremy W. ''The political mapping of cyberspace.'' University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Life and work

Born in Scotland, Spence received his Bsc in mathematics, physics, and psychology at the

University of Glasgow The University of Glasgow (abbreviated as ''Glas.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals; ) is a Public university, public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded by papal bull in , it is the List of oldest universities in continuous ...

, and his PhD in 1970 from the

with the thesis, entitled "Multidimensional scaling; an empirical and theoretical investigation." Spence started his academic career as Assistant Professor at the

University of Western Ontario The University of Western Ontario (UWO; branded as Western University) is a Public university, public research university in London, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land, surrounded by residential neighbourhoods and the Thame ...

. Later on he moved to

, where he became Professor in the Department of Psychology. Spence's research interests are in the fields of "engineering psychology, graphical perception, psychophysics, psychometric methods with an emphasis on measurement and scaling, and statistics."Ian Spence
at psych.utoronto.ca. Accessed 11.2014. His research projects in the new millennium included "the effective use of colour in scientific visualization, the role of colour in visual memory, individual differences in spatial cognition, and the navigation of dynamic information displays such as web sites."

Selected publications

* William Playfair,

Howard Wainer Howard Charles Wainer (born October 26, 1943) is an American statistician, past principal research scientist at the Educational Testing Service, adjunct professor of statistics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and author, ...

and Ian Spence. ''Playfair's Commercial and Political Atlas and Statistical Breviary.'' Cambridge University Press, 2005 Articles, a selection: * Spence, Ian, and John C. Ogilvie. "A table of expected stress values for random rankings in nonmetric multidimensional scaling." Multivariate Behavioral Research 8.4 (1973): 511-517. * Lewandowsky, Stephan, and Ian Spence. "The perception of statistical graphs." ''Sociological Methods & Research'' 18.2-3 (1989): 200-242. * Spence, Ian.
Visual psychophysics of simple graphical elements
" ''Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance'' 16.4 (1990): 683. * Feng, Jing, Ian Spence, and Jay Pratt.
Playing an action video game reduces gender differences in spatial cognition
" ''Psychological science'' 18.10 (2007): 850-855. * Spence, Ian.
No humble pie: The origins and usage of a statistical chart
" ''Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics'' 30.4 (2005): 353-368. * Spence, Ian, and Jing Feng.
Video games and spatial cognition
" ''Review of General Psychology'' 14.2 (2010): 92.

References

External links

University of Toronto {{DEFAULTSORT:Spence, Ian 1944 births Living people Scottish psychologists 21st-century Canadian psychologists Data and information visualization experts Alumni of the University of Glasgow University of Toronto alumni Academic staff of the University of Western Ontario Academic staff of the University of Toronto Place of birth missing (living people)