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How Critical Thinking Can Help You Solve Problems

By Exforsys | on August 28, 2006 |
Problem Solving

Critical thinking is a process in which a person will use their mind to analyze or study information. The information that is studied will typically be offered as something that is absolute. However, the person that is studying will reason on it in order to determine if they are in agreement with it.

Critical thinking is important for situations where logic needs to be used to solve a problem. Many researchers feel that schools should place a higher emphasis on critical thinking instead of memorization.

There are a number of problems with learning by memorizing facts, especially when it is used for solving problems. People who memorize information may not be able to apply that information in a useful way if their critical thinking skills are not well developed. Critical thinking seeks to find relationships between things that appear to be unrelated.

Critical thinking is a technique that can be used for history, math, science, engineering, and a host of other subjects. Critical thinking can be broken down into two parts, and this is cognitive skills and the ability to use these skills for everyday functions.

Critical thinking is a form of problem solving that is much more than just gaining knowledge. Someone who has good critical thinking skills will look at both sides of an argument, and they will also look at evidence to support the two arguments. In addition to this, they will break down the arguments and looking at the implications which are connected to them. Once they’ve done this, they will look for contradictions. The side that has the least amount of contradictions will be supported, while the side that has the most contradictions will be discarded.

Critical thinking is not a technique that will allow the user to find the absolute truth about information. The reason for this is because the information that is available may be limited. In addition to this, there may be information in existence which has not yet been discovered, and there may be information that will never be discovered.

People will often be biased, and will favor one form of information over another. While critical thinking should be different from feelings, the two should not be totally disconnected from each other. If you are not able to look at the various connections that exist in the real world, you will be susceptible to deceiving yourself.

To be skilled at using critical thinking to solve problems, you will first need to overcome any bias you may have on a particular subject or problem. Depending on the problem, you may need to collect information in order to solve it. When you are collecting this information, you must refrain from making any judgements about it. To give you an example of this, most people don’t generate an opinion about a movie or book until they’ve read it. This is how you want to be when you use critical thinking to solve a problem. You will need to collect the relevant information first, and then you will need to analyze it.

It is also important for you to realize your own knowledge and experience are limited. You are not omnipotent, and are not capable of seeing all aspects of a situation. One way to do this is to use the Socratic process in order to ask open ended questions. While statements tend to be biased, questions are not.

To understand critical thinking, you will need to know a bit about Occam’s Razor. Occam’s Razor basically says that you should never make more assumptions than is needed. Critical thinking is an ongoing process, and any conclusions you come to should be open for further review.

Critical thinking is much more complex than simply memorizing things. It is a system that allows you to think independently. Those who have strong critical thinking skills tend to come up with solutions to problems which are very logical. They are not tied down to one side of an issue. They tend to look at things from multiple angles.

For example, there are many people who feel that outsourcing is a bad thing. They say that it takes away jobs, and it allows large companies to profit. However, someone who has criical thinking skills would look at it from both sides. They would point out that the countries where the jobs are going will benefit as well.

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Editorial Team at Exforsys is a team of IT Consulting and Training team led by Chandra Vennapoosa.

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