"So I think if I were advising a young person today,
I would have some reservations about advising him
or her to go into statistics, but probably, in the end,
I would say, “Take statistics, but remember that
the great adventure of statistics is in gathering and
using data to solve interesting and important real
world problems.”

~ Leo Breiman

Sadly, Professor Breiman passed away on Tuesday. I never had the chance to meet him, but he was truly a brilliant statistician, who made significant contributions to data mining, classification, etc... -> CART, Random forests... I'm in such awe of the great and fascinating life that he led.