Pen of the Month Club / Pen #8 / Zebra Z-MulsionEX

(All smears and blobs are a natural expression of the pens and remain uncorrected for authenticity.)

Pen of the Month Club / Pen #7 / Bic Cristal vs. PaperMate Write Bros

A Bic Cristal pen will cost you about $.19 while a PaperMate Write Bros pen will cost only $.14. But cost may not be the only factor to consider when choosing a quality inexpensive pen. What will an extra 5 cents get you? Twenty-one PotMC members responded to the Bic Cristal vs. PaperMate Write Bros survey and their responses are below:

The PaperMate fizzled out after writing "PaperMa", so 95% of this is done in Bic.

I noticed a problem with the way I'm displaying this data, but I won't tell if you won't.

Licorice Leanings

A few weeks ago, I found this on my desk:

So I did what anyone with my proclivities would do:

Which column are you in?

(What should we collect data on next, CTAY?)

Pen of the Month Club / Pen #6 / Stabilo Mini

Pen of the Month Club / Pen #5 / Pentel Energel

(Each square represents one person.)

(I didn't want the right side to look as long as the left side when the list of criticisms was actually shorter, so I colored some of the lesser worst aspects blue because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.)

(No significance to blue or black text.)

Pen of the Month Club / Pen #4 / Zebra Surari

Pen of the Month Club / Pen #3 / Uni-ball Signo

Thought I'd try pie charts instead of box plots this time. What do you think?

Pen of the Month Club / Pen #2 / Bic Clic Stic

Worst Aspect

Best Aspect

Best and Worst word clouds made with Wordle. Beautiful purple pen in last handwritten picture courtesy of my December Pen Pal, Becky! It's a Stabilo. I looooove the color. You will probably see more of it used in future pen club statistics!

Pen of the Month Club / Pen #1 / Sharpie Pen

The Pen of the Month Club Pen Preference Profile Results

The Pen of the Month Club is a real thing that's really happening! All because of you, my 22 lovely pen-loving friends! Thanks again for coming on this adventure with me. I am loving the PotMC emails and discussions, and it has been a lot of fun to purchase, package, and deliver the first pen.

As promised, here are the results of the PotMC Pen Preference Profile survey that I sent out to members to discover what kinds of pens they like. Drawn largely with my collection of Sharpie pens, I took this opportunity to experiment with different visualizations of the same kind of data ("check all that apply" for a given category). I tried to channel my inner Tufte, but admittedly, it's been a while since I read his book, and I dropped out of the Data Visualizations course in grad school after 1 class.

For those of you feeling like you are maybe missing out on a little something special, you can still enroll for October, and begin enjoying the emails now.