Here he comes big with Statistics, Troubled and sharp about fac’s. He has heaps of the Form that is thinkable—The stuff that is feeling he lacks.—Robert Louis Stevenson

Our modern reliance on numbers and quantification was born and nurtured in the scientific and commercial worlds of the seventeenth century… Numerical facts trounced opinions and were supposed to foster community consensus, because all thinking people would naturally agree if they possessed total and accurate information—Patricia Cline Cohen, A Calculating People, 1999

In an increasingly complex world full of senseless coincidence, what’s required in many situations is not more facts – we’re inundated already – but a better command of known facts, and for this a course in probability is invaluable—John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy, 1988

I keep saying that the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians. And I’m not kidding—Hal Varian, 2009