Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read or write.

The actual quote referenced mathematics in general rather than statistics | The great body of physical science, a great deal of the essential fact of financial science, and endless social and political problems are only accessible and only thinkable to those who have had a sound training in mathematical analysis, and the time may not be very remote when it will be understood that for complete initiation as an efficient citizen of one of the new great complex world-wide States that are now developing, it is as necessary to be able to compute, to think in averages and maxima and minima, as it is now to be able to read and write. [HG Wells 1911, Mankind in the Making 2041] | cite journal | According to Tankard: It might be argued that statistics and mathematics were closely related in Wells' mind, and that when he wrote this passage he was to some extent thinking of procedures we would now regard as statistics. That is conjecture, however. Earlier sections of the paragraph deal with arithmetic and geometry, and its literal topic is mathematics. It doesn't contain the word "statistics " even though the term was clearly in use at the time of Well:' writing [Yule 19051].