"The top quarter of earners who majored in English make more over their lifetimes than the bottom quarter of chemical engineers."

This is an important statement. Success in a field is as important as the field itself. Those who lack the IQ or personality for an area of study and subsequent employment will find their life harder than it needs to be. My philosophy: there is value in being in the top ten percent--not that I've always lived by those words.

While the earnings chart is very compelling. I'm a little confused by the labelling. Why are the high and low end of the horizontal bars set to the 10th and 90th percentile? Does this mean the data point used as the high on the chart is the average (or median) of the sample of earners in the 90th percentile?