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Edward Tufte Appointed To Help Track and Explain Stimulus Funds
President Obama recently announced several appointments to the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, including data visualization expert Edward Tufte, author of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. The purpose of the panel is to advise the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, whose aim is "To promote accountability by coordinating and conducting oversight of Recovery funds to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse and to foster transparency on Recovery spending by providing the public with accurate, user-friendly information." Tufte said on his website, "I'm doing this because I like accountability and transparency, and I believe in public service. And it is the complete opposite of everything else I do. Maybe I'll learn something. The practical consequence is that I will probably go to Washington several days each month, in addition to whatever homework and phone meetings are necessary."
This should be - v e r y - interesting indeed.
I have enormous respect for Tufte and his integrity. I can;t wait to see what happens.
Remember, this is the guy who put Stalin on the cover of his pamphlet on "The Cognitive Style Of Powerpoint"
I'm reminded of Feynman on the Columbia commission.
-=Maggie Leber=-
he should fire Geithner and replace him with Elizabeth Warren. But no, he won't do that.
Warren? Well, anyone would be an improvement. Wouldn't Ron Paul be better? As treasury secretary, his peculiar opinions about abortion would be about as important as Tom Cruise's insights about foreign policy, i.e. quaintly irrelevant to the task at hand. Would be a nice last job for a smart old man (I mean RP not Cruise)
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I own his books and recommend them but it seems Tufte is difficult to deal with in person. He charged credit cards for pre-orders before shipping his not-yet-published book and then called someone who politely objected to that a "whiny sanctimonious asshole."
See Flip Philips' blog entry about the scandal here
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
I took a grad school seminar with him at Yale. The man is loopy, but he has a truly powerful brain. He comes up with ways of looking at problems that are like time bombs. First you think he's a crackpot - how could anyone propose something so ridiculous? Then a few days later, it's been stewing in the back of your head, and your mindly slowly blows as you realise just how much cleverer it is than anything you've heard before. Simply putting him near anything involving information is almost guaranteed to make it better somehow.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Shouldn't this post have been created first, *before* the gov't let loose billions of our taxpayer dollars, seems once in the wild, tracking that cash is going to be difficult.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.