Most of the time they deal with data the way their tools generally present data, which correlate closely to most analytics, perf analysis and observability software suites.
Expecting the average software eng to know what a CDF is the same as expecting them to know 3d graphics basics like quaternions and writing shaders.
Does your experience truly say that the average SWE is so ignorant? If so, why do you think that is?
> graphics is a very common and popular elective
I find these statements to be extremely doubtful. Why would a CS program cover statistics? Wouldn't that be the math department? If there any required courses, it's most likely Calc 1/2, Linear Algebra, and Discrete Math.
Also, out of the hundreds of programmers I've met, I don't know any that has done graphics programming. I consider that super niche.
I did write shaders and used quaternions back in the day. I also worked on microcontrollers, did some system programming, developed mobile and desktop apps. Now I am working on a rather large microservice based app.