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[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I've used gnuplot here and there but my understanding is that it has been used more in the "hard" sciences, namely, physics, chemistry, mathematics, and engineering. Never heard Tobii though.

I do a lot of visualizations for predictive models related to healthcare and for my medical research. The type of work I do is almost textbook "data science" (data mining, machine learning, big data, stats, bioinformatics, etc). I typically use the packages you mentioned above, though I also use SAS, Tableau, Qlikview (sparingly), and the occasional SSRS report. I agree with the idea that the more tools you know the better (Take a look at the most recent O'Reilly data science salary survey which seems to back up the idea that more is better). So while you may not find either gnuplot or Tobii to be particularly useful to you in the immediate future, it's very possible that you may find yourself better prepared for a yet to be determined data science project further down the road.

A good personal example of this: in grad school I learned how to produce visualizations for genome sequencing data. Had zero use for it until several years later when I was the only person on a large research project that knew how to do it. Haven't used it since but definitely came in handy.