“People inside the super-elite think the rise of the data geeks is just beginning. Elliot Schrage is a member of the tech aristocracy–he was the communications director for Google when it was the hottest company in the Valley and jumped to the same role at Facebook just as it was becoming a behemoth. At a 2009 talk he gave to an internal company meeting of education and publishing executives, Schrage was asked what field we should encourage our children to study. His instant answer was statistics, because the ability to understand data would be the most powerful skill in the twenty-first century.”

– Chrystia Freeland, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else