You’d think by this point we might have settled on a definition of what a data scientist is, or at least on a general agreement that they’re important. It seems we have not.

Here are two blog posts published within the last day about the relative value of data scientists:

• One is from Miko Matsumura, CEO of database vendor Hazelcast, who calls data scientists glorified database administrators who will find themselves the kings and queens of “a rotting whale-carcass of data.” You can read it here.
• The other is from John Foreman, chief data scientist at MailChimp (and, full disclosure, a regular Gigaom contributor lately), who argues that the work of a good data scientist will never cost as little as $30 per hour. You can read it here.

John Foreman (center) at Structure Europe 2013.

We’ve covered this ground before, in posts trying to define the skills…