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 interpretation of how indi ...

, 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 research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

, 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), a Scottish engineer and political economist, served as a secret agent on behalf of Great Britain during its war with France. The founder of graphical methods of statistics, Playfai ...

.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 , image = UofG Coat of Arms.png , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms Flag , latin_name = Universitas Glasguensis , motto = la, Via, Veritas, Vita , ...

, 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), also known as Western University or Western, is a Public university, public research university in London, Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land, surrounded by resident ...

. 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 Wainer (born 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, known for his contri ...

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 Canadian psychologists Information visualization experts Alumni of the University of Glasgow University of Toronto alumni University of Western Ontario faculty University of Toronto faculty Place of birth missing (living people)