[kwisatzh]

Totally agree! If I had a dollar bill every time I had a senior exec (VP-level) for large orgs ask me what 'probability' means, I wouldn't need to be a data scientist anymore! The issue is deeper than what you write I think. There is technical debt of course in implementing complex ML/DS pipelines that should be compensated by the increase in lift/revenue. Outside of large companies like Google/FB/Apple etc who have incorporated ML in their products, many outfits that want to use their 'data' to 'address business problems' don't really need sophisticated ML or can justify the technical and human debt. Having worked in the industry as a data scientist, I'm not too hopeful about the prospects of many DS-as-a-service companies, not because there isn't solid technical content to offer, but their clients are routinely idiots.

[woah]

Are you saying everyone is an idiot, including the customers of data science companies, or that people who pay for data science are especially idiotic?