The End of Average Quotes

“The hardest part of learning something new is not embracing new ideas, but letting go of old ones.”
― Todd Rose, The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness

“It is not that the average is never useful. Averages have their place. If you’re comparing two different groups of people, like comparing the performance of Chilean pilots with French pilots—as opposed to comparing two individuals from each of those groups—then the average can be useful. But the moment you need a pilot, or a plumber, or a doctor, the moment you need to teach this child or decide whether to hire that employee—the moment you need to make a decision about any individual—the average is useless. Worse than useless, in fact, because it creates the illusion of knowledge, when in fact the average disguises what is most important about an individual.”
― Todd Rose, The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness

“From the cradle to the grave, you are measured against the ever-present yardstick of the average, judged according to how closely you approximate it or how far you are able to exceed it.”
― Todd Rose, The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness

“Most of us know intuitively that a score on a personality test, a rank on a standardized assessment, a grade point average, or a rating on a performance review doesn’t reflect your, or your child’s, or your students’, or your employees’ abilities. Yet the concept of average as a yardstick for measuring individuals has been so thoroughly ingrained in our minds that we rarely question it seriously.”
― Todd Rose, The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness

“Our modern conception of the average person is not a mathematical truth but a human invention, created a century and a half ago by two European scientists to solve the social problems of their era.”
― Todd Rose, The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness

“Out of 4,063 pilots, not a single airman fit within the average range on all ten dimensions.”
― Todd Rose, The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness

“when an organization makes the decision to value the individuality of its employees, it is not only the employees who win—the system wins, too, and wins bigger than ever.”
― Todd Rose, The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness

“the purpose of schools was not to educate all students to the same level, but to sort them,”
― Todd Rose, The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness

“You no longer need to fly a World War II aircraft in an age of jet fighters, and you no longer need to weigh yourself against a non-existent Norma.”
― Todd Rose, The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness