I did my PhD in econometrics. Reading this article, it looks like it was a general interest article profiling a professor who just got tenure. So if people are asking "how is this relevant to me", "how can I use this" or "should I learn more", the answers are most likely "it's not", "you can't", and "no". Not trying to be negative here, it's just that there are dozens of people getting tenure in econometrics every year at a similar level, all working on things that might seem to have some relevance to what HN readers are working on. From a HN readers perspective, there is nothing unique or special that I see here.