DAV, thanks for all your help and comments on the other issues.
Apparently the font size IB was going for on the axis numbers is 10, according to how it matches up with a typed in comment with font size 10 selected (the smallest choice available). I'm wondering why IB would make the default axis font size the smallest out of the available choices for chart comments (again, font size selection not available for axis numbers, in case that wasn't clear). But the real issue is that the "size 10" is actually considerably smaller than true size 10. I've attached a picture with 2 examples of actual size 10 font, one from MS Word and one from Notepad.
I will submit a ticket if necessary, but hopefully you'd agree based on this pic there is a distortion of scale with the IB fonts, and the numbers are unusually small and difficult to read.