MN4443 Critical Thinking for Data-Informed Decisions

Course Description: Bigger, better, faster data and analytic tools can seem to have almost magical powers, and access to data, analysis tools, and data-driven business processes are proliferating. Unfortunately, the magic doesn't eliminate the need for critical thinking, especially in defense management. This course teaches how to think critically about the vulnerabilities of data analysis and how to design and interpret data-driven analysis to get the most out of it. We ask and answer questions including:

• Where and how does human judgement enter into data-based decision making---including traditional statistical analyses?
• How do known cognitive biases and motivational biases affect data collection, design of analyses, and interpretation of results, and how can we counteract these biases?
• How can we derive useful insights about the future from data about the past? How do blue-team and red-team reactions to our analyses and policies complicate the interpretation of our analysis, and how do we adjust for that?
• How do consumers of data-informed analysis interpret the answers it produces? What does the user need to know about the quality and limitations of an analysis? What does a user need and want to know about the roles of humans and computers in the production of an analytic result?

Lecture Hours

3

Lab Hours

0