Crticial Thinking for Excellent Decision Making

Introduction to Critical Thinking

•Why is it important?
•Opinions versus facts
•Objectivity: Can’t manage what you can’t decipher or understand
•Types of critical thinking

Critical Thinking Type A: How people manipulate Data and numbers, and how to handle these through better understanding and evaluating of these data and numbers

•Likelihood and Plausibility
•Why the word “average” can be problematic?
•Graphical representation: conmen of axes – catching deception
•How to spot cheating when you hear others report on numbers
•Bias and other traps on how data, numbers are collected
•Chances and probabilities
•Workshop on data and numbers

Critical Thinking Type B: How people play with words, and how you can be an expert in spotting or knowing this

•Asking “how do you/we know”
•Who is an expert: cases of professionals making mistakes, or knowingly fooling and deceiving you
•Experts in alternative explanations
•Definition of counterknowledge, and managing it
•Workshop

Critical Thinking Type C: overall evaluation in making you an well-rounded critical thinker

•The workings of science and scientific work
•Are you Superstitious?
•How to know what you don’t know?
•Famous cases
•Workshop

Quantitative Data & its usage

•Examples and cases
•Interpretation
•Learning forecasting
•Other applications
•Workshop

Qualitative Data: Judgment & Usage

•Five Forces
•Strategic Factors
•Workhop

Limitations and challenges

•Human Factors e.g. Confirmation bias, Halo & Horn Effect
•Not linked to incentivization

Conclusion: be a “discoverer” and “scientist”