The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness

By Todd Rose

Categories: Education & Teaching, Politics & Social Sciences

Todd Rose's 2016 book opens with a 1950s US Air Force study in which Lieutenant Gilbert Daniels measured more than 4,000 pilots on ten body dimensions and found that none was average on all ten, so a cockpit designed for the average pilot fit no one. Rose argues that schools, workplaces and hiring make the same mistake, and draws on the science of individuality to propose three principles, jaggedness, context and pathways, for judging people by their own profiles rather than against a mean.

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• Richard Branson: “I couldn't agree more with this quote from Professor Todd Rose, author of the new book The End of Average - which uses scientific and mathematical findings to demonstrate that it is simply not possible to draw meaningful conclusions about human beings using statistical averages.”