Last summer, we asked our readers to rate our comics. A ballot form appeared twice in the paper, and readers were also able to cast one electronic vote at sunjournal.com.

We received about 1,600 completed ballots. As you can see from the chart on this page, slightly more women than men voted, and participation was heavily tilted toward readers over 55 years of age.

We tallied those results, and we also applied a mathematical formula that gave extra weight to readers who said they loved a comic or hated it. The formula de-emphasized those who said they didn’t care much one way or the other.

We decided to drop two daily comics out of the 16 we run, two of the least favorite as indicated by our readers. We decided to keep Dilbert because it is one of the few comics on the page that appeals to younger readers, despite its low vote total.

We then decided to drop three of the 22 Sunday comics, again the three least-favorite as indicated by readers.

The next step, deciding what to add, was a bit more challenging. We studied similar comic-page research from newspapers across the country and looked for comics that we don’t run that are popular with readers elsewhere.

The two favorites with all age groups were Baby Blues and Crankshaft. So, we decided to add those daily and Sunday. The next most popular were Zits, Get Fuzzy and Fox Trot. We decided to add those on Sundays.

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