According to Google's chief economist, the expert who may be in greatest demand over the next ten years might be the statistician.

What?

With the new and increasing measuring tools made available by the Internet, marketing decisions will be made more and more by the numbers. Specically, who is my biggest market and how do I get to it with crucial information? Will customers come looking for me? How do I make sure they find me?

Our friends at Conversion Rate Experts also suggest that the endless meetings about what people might want can be quickly and cheaply brought to a satisfying end. What features are most valuable to our customers? Test popular features on your site and see.

Test the "great taste" crowd with a page that features taste. Test the "less filling" crowd with a page that features stomach comfort. Which one converts?

With the statistics these tests produce, you have a great resource for allocating your ad dollars.

Back to my college stats book.

Google’s prediction: What will be the “sexy” job in the next ten years?