Analytical thinking vs critical thinking – Part 3

Simple thinking skills are learning facts and recall, and more complex include analysis, synthesis, problem solving, evaluation, decision making. Let us see what skills are included in the thinking process.

Focusing. It is selected piece of information that we organize.

Remembering. Part of our memory that we can evoke and retrieve.

Organizing. Arranging information.

Analyzing. Examining the information and relationships so that the structure is understood.

Evaluating. Assessing the information to build an opinion. Placing the information into a context.

Generating. Producing new ideas, new perspectives.

Analytical thinking helps you process information, make connections, make decisions and create new ideas.

You use those thinking skills when you want to solve a problem, ask a question or organize some information. We all have thinking skills, but not all of us use them efficiently.

The good thing is that we can practice our ability to think so we can develop our thinking skills. We might say that analytical thinking mainly aims to give a review to the information.

Critical thinking aims to make an overall evaluation, judgment or conclusion about the information which is possibly free from false premises or bias.

Analytical thinking includes:

• facts and evidence
• Information analyzing
• Reasoning – logical thinking
• Finding alternatives
• Trend analyzing trends, anticipating, change analyzing

Critical thinking involves:

• Thorough evaluation of information
• Checking for bias and prejudices
• Evaluating the correctness of the point claimed.
• Weighing up opinions, arguments or solutions
• Reasoning and logical conclusion making
• Checking whether arguments really support the conclusions.

As a critical thinker, you make the decision whether or not an object or situation appears to be right or wrong.

You evaluate the data and determine how it should be interpreted. You then make conclusions regarding your perception of the information.

In addition, that new information is combined with your worldview in order to make the most accurate assessment of the matter in question.

Critical thinking, just like analytical thinking, uses facts but goes one step further. The facts are used to form an opinion or a belief. So we can say that the critical thinking is more an opinion-based thinking.