Saving Millions

What began as a middle-school student's science fair project could save the federal government millions of dollars -- and all it would require is a switch to a different font.

Fourteen-year-old Suvir Mirchandani (above) has adapted his sixth-grader science fair project from Dorseyville Middle School in Pittsburgh -- a study of the cost savings incurred by switching the font in his school’s paper handouts -- to show exactly how much money the bigwigs in Washington, D.C., could save if they followed suit.

His project showed that switching the school's paper font from Times New Roman to Garamond would save his school about $21,000 a year in ink costs.

Spurred on by a teacher, Mirchandani submitted his research to the Journal of Emerging Investigators, which publishes the work of high school and middle-school students, CNN reported.

What is JEI?

The Journal of Emerging Investigators is an open-access journal that publishes original research in the biological and physical sciences that is written by middle and high school students.  

JEI provides students, under the guidance of a teacher or advisor, the opportunity to submit and gain feedback on original research and to publish their findings in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. 

Because grade-school students often lack access to formal research institutions, we expect that the work submitted by students may come from classroom-based projects, science fair projects, or other forms of mentor-supervised research.

JEI is a non-profit group run and operated by graduate students at Harvard University. JEI also provides the opportunity for graduate students to participate in the editorial, review, and publication process. 

Our hope is that JEI will serve as an exciting new forum to engage young students in a novel kind of science education that nurtures the development and achievements of young scientists throughout the country.

The founders and editorial board of JEI are graduate students in the Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology at Harvard Medical School. Since the founding, we have expanded to include graduate students from all scientific fields.

The journal's editors encouraged Suvir to see if the font switch would result in similar savings for the U.S. government, which according to the Office of Management and Budget has an estimated $1.8 billion printing budget for 2014.

“We were so impressed,” Dr. Sarah Fankhauser, the journal's founder, told Forbes. “We really could see the real-word application in Suvir’s paper.”

Suvir tested his font theory with five documents from the Government Printing Office (GPO) and concluded that switching the government documents' fonts from Times New Roman and Century Gothic (used on all government documents) exclusively to the more space-efficient Garamond would greatly cut costs in ink expenditure for both state and federal governments. 

The font point size remained the same in the study. He predicts the federal government would save roughly $136 million a year, and state agencies could collectively save up to $234 million annually.

NOTE:  This article’s font is Garamond