I’m a cartographer/GIS user, so specialising more on the production/tech side of things.
Over the past few years I’ve worked with topographic, geologic, land management, land survey, town planning, environmental, hydrographic and demographic data depending on the (Govt.) Department I’m in and what I’m doing (even provided some data to the police to assist with a murder investigation!). Along with that I’ve had to gain some photoshop & printing process knowledge along with some communications and colour theory thrown in.
It can be a jack-of-all-trades kind of job. Math wise, as has been stated, some statistics, scaling & ratios, boolean and algebraic sets, a bit of calculus & trig is handy.
When I was studying it was at a more tech-college level which had core courses and then specialised out into three streams (Suveying, Cartography & Drafting (I think)) so we did a lot of practical field work surveying and followed the process from survey through to finished product.
I’d say you need a background knowledge of how the GIS works and why it’s doing the things it does. For the most part the GIS does the calculations - I just get to make the end results look pretty
In this context I guess I should clarify my earlier remarks. Among my roles, I was involved in the creation and maintainance of GIS tools. They “do the calculations” because people like me make them. That’s why I need a lot of math in my work.
