Data is like horses; it can be untamed and unmanageable or it can be trained and useful. Taking data from the one state to the other can be routine and fit to the ken of any data scientist. But then, sometimes there are wild Clydesdale data sets, big bucking blobs of inconsistency that require the skills of a Data Whisperer.

A Data Whisperer is someone who can see an analytics problem from the data's perspective. The DW understands where the data came from, how it has been used, what…