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Well I'll try to make my contribution to the Channel with my favorite STEM topic: data analysis, specifically cartography! Which these days is pretty heavily focused on GIS.

"A Geographic Information System (GIS) is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present spatial or geographic data. GIS applications are tools that allow users to create interactive queries (user-created searches), analyze spatial information, edit data in maps, and present the results of all these operations."

- Wikipedia

There is really only one major player in the commercial industry, Esri with the ArcGIS program suite, which only runs on Windows. I've used it for about 10 years now for both basic and advanced tasks (advanced being somewhat basic compared to some of the more incredible things others have done) If you want it you are looking at a few hundred dollars for the commerical license or 100$ USD for the at home educational / non profit license.

Thankfully for FOSS there is a fantastic alternative, which is QGIS! QGIS is what I use currently for all my mapping and spatial modeling needs. It runs on Windows (which lets face it if you are working for the man you'll likely be forced to use). It comes with many basic spatial tools to use as well as the ability to write new tools with a Qt UI in Python. Its also in my mind more than a match for Esri for most GIS tasks. qgis.org/en/site/

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