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Edward Tufte appointed by Obama to help track, and explain stimulus funds
- nkh 17y agoObama scored some big points in my book for this one. Edit: When he did not follow up on his promise to have C-Span follow the health care debates, left a bad taste in my mouth. I have attended a Tufte conference, and he spent a lot of time discussing the challenger disaster. While he was no where near the as good as Feynman (who is?), he graphically presented the government information very well. If anything it will draw attention to the problem as he is a big name in this space.
- TobiasCassell 17y agoI am in Shock.. happy shock.. But, shock..
- voidfiles 17y agoWhat is so shocking, I think Obama has been finding the best-of-the-best and appointing them to the right places.
- TobiasCassell 17y agoYes, true. I think its shocking when something happens in our political system with absolutely zero downside. I never expected this, and perhaps it means a level of transparency/communication that was previously unattainable. I guess I'm shocked somebody I admire so much will have a voice in our challenges. I think its exciting, and I'm really happy about it. Edit, I'm pretty jaded.. So anything good is shocking to me..
- voidfiles 17y agoYea, its weird a little too, like if he does a great job, it won't necessarily mean that he is going to be doing everything. Really his job is going to be to teach others how properly communicate in a visual manner, something the government in large part hasn't taken the time to address. Or mayby its better to think that they just weren't ever given the liberty to think about it.
- hga 17y agoErrr ... if he publicly resigns in disgust there will be a downside. Give that this "is the complete opposite of everything else I do. Maybe I'll learn something.", maybe he'll learn that he's doesn't like the ways of Washington vs. the task at hand, in which case it'll be an unforced error. If he's not able to prevent the board that this panel is advising from publishing chartjunk or worse ... what can he do, especially in the light of the brand he's established? Hard to see how he could avoid explicitly or implicitly telling us the reason(s) he resigned and that they reflect badly on the administration.
- TobiasCassell 17y agoYes, I agree. I woke up thinking of lots of downsides and I'm back to my good, old, jaded self.
- jamesbritt 17y agoCan you give some examples of this? He's appointed several RIAA laywers to positions at the Department of Justice. He picked Janet Napolitano to run Homeland Security. (I'm a 'Zonie of 10 years.) While he may also be picking some good people, I'm not seeing "best of the best" as any sort of theme.
- hga 17y agoA tax cheat in charge of the Treasury which includes the Federal tax collection agency; this has immediate real world effects in terms of people's attitudes towards paying taxes. This also cripples one of the most important positions in the government in a time of economic troubles.
- warfangle 17y agoAdd to the list Geithner, who has very close ties with the folks who screwed up Wall Street in the first place..
- Locke1689 17y agoSteven Chu as the secretary of energy — absolutely fantastic choice.
- roboneal 17y agoRegardless of where you stand on the global warming debate... "California's farms and vineyards could vanish by the end of the century, and its major cities could be in jeopardy, if Americans do not act to slow the advance of global warming, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said Tuesday." http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/04/local/me-warming4 http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/04/local/me-warming4 So were to believe within 90 years all the farms and vineyards will vanish from California if we do nothing? That's just headlining grabbing bunk, hardly befitting a "scientist".
- MartinCron 17y ago"Visualization Czar", anyone?
- opoloqo 17y agowow.
- opoloqo 17y agoplease accept my apologies for a non-substantive comment.
- jrockway 17y agoI never realized that Tufte was a political science professor. Anyway, I think Obama made a great choice here. (I was going to write a long discussion of why, but it will just lead to political debate, so I am censoring myself :))
- jamesbritt 17y agoCould he maybe do the same for the general US budget?
- voidfiles 17y agoI think this is a first step, its like saying out loud that we need to take visual communication more seriously. Hopefully his teachings can go viral, and effect all the people in the right places.
- jamesbritt 17y ago"I think this is a first step, its like saying out loud that we need to take visual communication more seriously. " I'm inclined to believe this will only be applied to those topics the administration wants to sell to the public. I don't expect to ever see it applied to, for example, where tax dollars go.
- voidfiles 17y agoThe problem is they hired a teacher, and teachers can be viral. So, in a sense then it may backfire on themselves.
- sachinag 17y agoSeriously, they publish this every year in all the detail you could possibly want. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget And if you think that the White House is trying to hide it, here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget_fy2009_default/ http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget_fy2009_default/
- jamesbritt 17y agoPoint taken. However, my point (not well expressed) is that no adminsitration has gone out of their way to ensure that citizens really understand the financrs of their government. The data are there, but, for example, those links for the OMB are hardly paragons of clarity. There's is a reason to hire someone like Tufte, and that is because a) this sort of data are hard to convey in all their nuance and import, and b) there's no one currently in place who is doing a good job of it.
- starkfist 17y agoDo these people receive renumeration for the time they spend on the panel?
- pohl 17y agos/renumeration/remuneration/
- starkfist 17y agowhoops. I should have just asked outright: how much will Tufte get paid?
- mos1 17y agoIs this question a preparation to accuse him of being an unethical shill if his findings disagree with your ideological predispositions? Because it really sounds like you're gearing up to find a reason to dismiss his message if it doesn't mesh with your preconceived ideas.
- 100k 17y agoWell _this_ is going to be interesting! I look forward to seeing how Tufte designs for an audience (the American people) more used to USA Today infographics.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- tjic 17y agoI just love the gratuitous American bashing that we always see in these sorts of discussions. Look, the average IQ on the planet is 100. Here, in England, in Germany. Education here isn't great, but it's not noticeably worst than in Mexico, Italy, or Russia. The American people aren't geniuses, one and all, but then again - who is? I wouldn't complain about women, or blacks, or any other group for a trait that's common across all humans ("stupid women ... never saving enough for retirement!"), and I don't think that bemoaning folks by which country they were born into is any more appropriate.
- 100k 17y agoUh...I'm American and am intimately familiar with the level of statistical reasoning that informs our political discourse.
- evgen 17y agoAnd what country does any better? "People" as a general class are woefully educated in statistics around the world, or at least all share the common ability to turn off their ability to make rational decisions based on statistical evidence whenever their favored group is not supported by the available statistical evidence.
- abstractbill 17y agoHaving lived for large amounts of time in both the UK and the US, I would say the level of political discourse in the UK is generally higher than in the US (I attribute this mostly to a very strong and reasonably independent media in the UK that's really not afraid to hold feet to the fire and ask intelligent questions, and usually doesn't "dumb things down").
- blogimus 17y agoI predict less use of PowerPoint.
- voidfiles 17y agoHopefully, less slides, because slides aren't inherently bad
- blogimus 17y agoSlides are a crutch (but I use them too) Much better if there are very brief (3-5 page) documents with clean multivariate visualizations as appropriate. Then discuss (This is what Tufte recommends). A nice multivariate visualization method is RadViz. The real metric is "Does it add value to the viewer?" If it is more of a presenter crutch, then get rid of it or boil the slides to the bare minimum. I tend to favor white boards and markers and ask the audience questions. But that is just my style.
- CoreDumpling 17y agoI sincerely hope Tufte can successfully counteract the Washington tradition of applying the methods from How to Lie with Statistics. A good visualization can just as well expose the fraud from a contrived one.
- ewjordan 17y agoFrom what I've read of his work, Tufte has almost a compulsion to force data to tell the truth, and do so in an effective manner. Which makes me fear that his career in Washington will be politically disastrous and end rather quickly... I sincerely hope I'm wrong about that. We could use more people like him keeping the government honest from the inside.
- tokenadult 17y agoYes. What if the data plainly presented show that the stimulus plan was plainly a waste of money? P.S. How many of you, when you hear announcements of how many jobs have been saved by the stimulus plan, immediately do the mental arithmetic to figure out how many dollars of taxpayer funds were spent to save each job? I think I could do better in my family in keeping us all actively employed in work helpful to society with the same number of dollars per employable person.
- byrneseyeview 17y agoBefore you do that math, make sure you're not counting raises, theoretical jobs from as-yet-un-funded projects, etc. Here's a nice map of where all the fake saved-jobs are: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/maps/Bogus-jobs-created-or-saved-by-the-Stimulus.html http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/maps/Bogus-jobs-created-or... Although you have to adjust upward: faking the existence of tens of thousands of jobs is obviously difficult work, and I bet more than one person is working full-time on the faking.
- tdoggette 17y agoEzra Klein of the Washington Post deals with this claim (that the stimulus was ineffective because of how much money it spent per job created). http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/02/bad_stimulus_math.html http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/02/bad_stim... Tax credits, Pell grants, unemployment support: it's not all jobs. But you have to blame the administration for this [perception], at least in part: They sold the stimulus in terms of job creation, rather than simple economic growth.
- InclinedPlane 17y agoThis should be an easy job. Just photoshop an image of a black hole with a giant pile of nearly a trillion dollars falling into it.
- jrockway 17y agoThat's what the military spending visualization czar should do, anyway.
- hga 17y agoAlso funny, but it would be a challenge for someone like Tufte to go beyond that fantastic chart about Napoleon's campaign in Russia to show us less easily quantifiable things like: What it means every time a jihadist in Pakistan is notified that "You've got missile." The benefits of keeping the sea lanes open and free. Bonus points for tracking the historical effects of more and less vigorous suppression of piracy. How beneficial it has been to keep Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, etc. free in the post-WWII era. Bonus points for comparing their respective increases in economic and political freedom with their climbs up the value chain. A special study of Singapore could be fascinating ("Disneyland with the death penalty"). Etc.
- jamesbritt 17y ago'The benefits of keeping the sea lanes open and free. Bonus points for tracking the historical effects of more and less vigorous suppression of piracy.' 'How beneficial it has been to keep Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, etc. free in the post-WWII era. Bonus points for comparing their respective increases in economic and political freedom with their climbs up the value chain. A special study of Singapore could be fascinating ("Disneyland with the death penalty").' These are terrific, difficult, and important questions. Are there freely available Web sites, perhaps along the lines of Wikipedia[0], for articles that try to explain correlation and side-effects of assorted facts and events? [0] I have mixed thoughts on Wikipedia. I've read enough articles with unsubstantiated opinion pushing either a commercial or ideological point view to be deeply skeptical of the site. But the general idea of having some quasi-moderated place for deeper observations beyond fact-reporting is appealing.
- pohl 17y agoNot since Feynman on the Challenger Commission have I been so excited about a presidential appointment.
- mcantor 17y agoSeconded. After a rocky first year, this decision alone makes me feel vindicated for having voted Obama.