Right now, for instance, we resist giving people extra time on exams or for assignments, as though it's unfair to the faster students.

The Age of Average gave us a lot. Take clothing: We've all benefited remarkably from large, medium and small sizes making things affordable and available, but when it really counts - the wedding gown and the pressurized fighter pilot suit - it's bespoke all the way.

I care deeply about opportunity and fairness, because I grew up really poor.

We need to develop people rather than process them.

Education and the workforce: I think these two things go together in terms of human potential.

Our biggest project is actually more in the social sciences, where we are studying mastery - how people get good at things - only we do it from an individuality perspective.

We've become so used to the concept as a measuring and sorting tool, that it and its correlates - below-average, above-average - are everyday speech. We don't even question the language, although the challenges we face require a different mindset.

That was one of my most surprising discoveries when I dug into the history of average-ism: When you actually get the data, it rarely captures anyone. Which then begs the question, why are we using this as a reference standard for human beings?

It's fine to pretend that people are one-dimensional, like in body size the problem comes when you forget that you are just pretending.