I 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.

This 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.

Obama 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.

I 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 :))

Not since Feynman on the Challenger Commission have I been so excited about a presidential appointment.

"Visualization Czar", anyone?

I am in Shock.. happy shock.. But, shock..

I predict less use of PowerPoint.

Could he maybe do the same for the general US budget?

Well _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.

Do these people receive renumeration for the time they spend on the panel?

wow.