I recall reading some analysis on electronic instruments presented as either dials or as numbers many years ago.
It was said that is is much easier to spot an indicator out of its normal place on a dial type display than a number.
As stated above the point was that you did not have to read the numbers to determine if there was a problem - merely scan the dials to see something was wrong.
This effect is even more noticeable on a complex bank of say multiple engine dials where a single errorous indicator in the dial format will be spotted far quicker than a bank of numbers.