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That article was really well-rounded.

I think over the next decade we're in for a huge shortage of analysts and statisticians in almost all fields of life. Availability of data is ever increasing. The benefits from using it more effectively than competitors are immense. In almost all of the startup businesses in our portfolio (venture capital firm), we've now hired number-crunching guys who do nothing but metrics and we're seeing the results.

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shortage? nah. now those finance majors who were making millions on juggling mutual funds can get a real job and contribute to society rather than living off unearned commissions. (if your mutual fund does worse than the economy as a whole you don't deserve reward, you are worse than random input)

Well if they can't even do better than the S&P 500. Let's not hope that they'd do much to society analyzing other data. ;)

First things came to my mind being that schools would use these data to determine admission. What kind of applicants will yield the best pay off? (endowment?) Same for companies hiring employees.

Interesting idea. One of the things I found interesting about Moneyball is that the Oakland A's were willing to pay premiums to role players, and older (presumably on their way down) veterans.

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