Tag: analysis

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking may be one of the most overused terms out there. It can mean just about anything anyone wants it to. We keep seeing it popping up in ICH Q9(r1), guidance on data integrity, and many other places. It has really become shorthand for “think better.” So, let us go to the basics and discuss what critical thinking is.

Critical thinking is a multifaceted cognitive process that involves the active and skillful conceptualization, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of information gathered from observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication. It aims to form a judgment or make a decision based on reliable information and rational analysis.

  1. Questioning and Clarifying: Critical thinking begins with questioning the information presented and clarifying the purpose and context of the thinking process. This involves identifying the problem or question and understanding the assumptions and concepts.
  2. Analyzing and Evaluating: This involves breaking down information into constituent parts to understand its structure and meaning. It also includes evaluating the credibility of sources, the validity of arguments, and the relevance and accuracy of the information.
  3. Synthesizing and Interpreting: Critical thinkers synthesize information from various sources to form a coherent understanding. They interpret data and evidence to draw conclusions and make informed judgments.
  4. Awareness of Biases: It is crucial to be aware of one’s own biases and assumptions. Critical thinkers strive to minimize personal biases’ influence and objectively consider alternative viewpoints.
  5. Intellectual Standards: Critical thinking is guided by intellectual standards such as clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.
  6. Application and Communication: It involves applying the insights gained through critical thinking to real-world problems and effectively communicating the reasoning behind decisions and judgments.

Critical thinking is a vital skill that involves a disciplined approach to analyzing and evaluating information. It is characterized by a commitment to intellectual rigor and a systematic method of questioning, analyzing, and synthesizing information to make well-informed decisions. Developing critical thinking skills is a lifelong endeavor that enhances one’s ability to reason and make judgments.

Critical thinking is something we educate on, not train. We cannot proceduralize critical thinking; we can only create tools to drive the behaviors.

Data, and all that jazz

As  we all try to figure out just exactly what Industry 4.0 and Quality 4.0 mean it is not an exaggeration to say “Data is your most valuable asset. Yet we all struggle to actually get a benefit from this data and data integrity is an area of intense regulatory concern.

To truly have value our data needs to be properly defined, relevant to the tasks at hand, structured such that it is easy to find and understand, and of high-enough quality that it can be trusted. Without that we just have noise.

Apply principles of good master data management and data integrity. Ensure systems are appropriately built and maintained.

Understand why data matters, how to pick the right metrics, and how to ask the right questions from data. Understand correlation vs. causation to be able to make decisions about when to act on analysis and when not to is critical.

In the 2013 article Keep Up with Your Quants, Thomas Davenport lists six questions that should be asked to evaluate conclusions obtained from data:

1. What was the source of your data?

2. How well do the sample data represent the population?

3. Does your data distribution include outliers? How did they affect the results?

4. What assumptions are behind your analysis? Might certain conditions render your assumptions and your model invalid?

5. Why did you decide on that particular analytical approach? What alternatives did you consider?

6. How likely is it that the independent variables are actually causing the changes in the dependent variable? Might other analyses establish causality more clearly?

Framing data, being able to ask the right questions, is critical to being able to use that data and make decisions. In the past it was adequate enough for a quality professional to have a familiarity with a few basic tools. Today it is critical to understand basic statistics. As Nate Silver advises in an interview with HBR. “The best training is almost always going to be hands on training,” he says. “Getting your hands dirty with the data set is, I think, far and away better than spending too much time doing reading and so forth.”

Understanding data is a key ability and is necessary to thrive. It is time to truly contemplate the data ecosystem as a system and stop treating it as a specialized area of the organization.