“My father once told me that I would never be successful because I have too much contempt for authority,” says Edward Tufte. “I think that’s been an enormously successful strategy.”

At 67, Tufte (pronounced TUFF-tee) defies easy categorization. He has been a university statistician and a public policy wonk. And these days, he’s more excited about turning bulldozers into sculpture than the abstractions of information analysis.

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